Quick and Easy Christmas Gifts
You’re sure to find something for your loved ones in our list of easy Christmas gifts. These are relatively inexpensive / simple to make. Perfect for busy working parents, those with a smaller budget, or people with limited time on their hands.
Personalised Crossword
Great for word lovers, this crossword puzzle that you create yourself is fun and thoughtful. The answers and clues can be anything – themed on the favourite band or film series of the person you are gifting it to, or even a roundup of in-jokes from the last year.
Websites like education.com make it easy as they format the crossword puzzle for you.
Handmade Poster of Things We Love About You
Getting children involved makes this an ideal gift for family. If you’re artistic yourself, this also makes a caring and unexpected gift for a friend, especially if they’ve been going through a rough time. This could be designed as a drawing or with words, laid out as a word cloud, poem or flowing lines of words.
Personalised Plant Pots
People can often make room for a new plant, especially if it’s of the small and hard-to-kill variety. Buy (or grow, if you’ve got a green thumb) some mini succulents and decorate the pot to include the recipient’s name or favourite colour. Pothos, or Devil’s Ivy, is a brilliant houseplant that stays green even in the shade. It’s also easy to propagate, so you can buy one plant and cut off shoots to grow more of your own.
Christmas Tree Ornaments
This one’s a classic for a reason. Try gifting your friends with ornaments tied to a specific event or occasion from the past year, or an in-joke you’ve shared. It’s a lovely way for them to be reminded of that event every year, each time they go to decorate their tree.
Fancy Sweets
People don’t tend to buy the ‘fancier’ kind of sweets for themselves, so Christmas is a great time to treat them. Small boxes of chocolates usually go down well, but you could also try popcorn in unusual flavours, like Joe & Seph’s; gourmet marshmallows; or meringue ‘kisses’ like those by Flower and White.
Brownie Mix in a Jar
Use a mason jar and fill it with the correct amount of dry ingredients for brownies, gingerbread or Christmas cookies. Then write the missing ingredients, quantity and baking time on a gift tag and attach to the neck of the jar. A bonus of this gift is that you can easily make several jars at once. BBC Good Food have a good recipe here.
Novelty Hot Chocolate
Hot chocolate lollies and bombs are a fun way to enjoy this winter favourite. Children, especially, will enjoy stirring a lolly into warm milk, or watching a chocolate bomb melt to reveal mini marshmallows inside. If you’re feeling creative, why not make these quick and easy reindeer hot chocolate cones.
Drink Coasters
Forget the mug – it’s often the coasters that people need more of, especially when guests come over. You can find unique and pretty coasters in a variety of places, such as Etsy, which has beautiful wooden laser-cut coasters designed by local businesses.
Chocolate Bar Sleigh
This is an easy way to gift someone’s favourite chocolate with a festive theme. Using two small candy canes as the runners at the bottom of the sleigh, stack two or three chocolate bars on top. This works well you place a larger chocolate at the bottom. For example, put a double KitKat at the bottom and then put two smaller bars on top. Secure the sleigh with some tape, and use a piece of ribbon for the finishing touch. Click here for an example.
