Homemade Christmas Gifts & Blessings in Disguise

Christmas time usually brings a financial crunch to the average family, and I’m guessing this is especially true this year with the struggling economy.

We’re accustomed to “living tightly”, but one particular Christmas was the darkest I can remember, and yet as so often is the case, many blessings were born out of it, most of which we still reap.

God works like that…trials are never pleasant at the moment, but they produce fruit if we allow them!

We were still battling a mountain of debt that we fell into when my husband’s business folded, work was slow, and the creditors were hanging us out to dry. They were using scare tactics about “taking our house” if we didn’t overnight them the full amount of our debt…creditors are not your friend, as Dave Ramsey reminded.

We finally learned how to handle them, but at the time, we didn’t know about “the red line”, and we were paying credit cards before our basic necessities–and therefore being forced to use credit cards to PAY for our basic necessities! (Boy, we’ve learned a lot!)

Needless to say, purchasing presents for Christmas seemed impossible. We got really creative that year! AND, that hard year birthed a home business for us–Nurtured by Nature Skin Products.

We made most all of our gifts, and we didn’t buy any wrapping paper. I requested brown paper bags if I bought any groceries and used that to wrap. We stamped the wrapping, tied the boxes up with raffia, attaching pine cones, leaves and anything else we found decorative. I cut shapes out of an old quilt and attached those too.

Speaking of the old quilt (which I bought for a couple of dollars at the Thrift Store)…I laid a stocking on it and cut out another one–two matching pieces. Then sewed them to make a “vintage stocking”–they were actually VERY cute. (I had no electric sewing machine at the time so I sewed them by hand 😉 And I can’t sew my way out of a wet paper bag!

We did lots of “gifts in a jar” and put them in baskets purchased from the Thrift Store.

We made personalized stationery printed with a simple computer design and with inked-stamped designs.

We made homemade candles out of old candle pieces.

We mostly scavenged yard sales and thrift stores for new-looking gifts for the kids–they were too young to know the difference, and don’t think they care anyway (we still do this!)

The skin product business was born out of my idea to make some to give as gifts. As I gathered recipes and thought about packaging ideas, my entrepreneurial light bulb went off and I thought “why not sell some too?”

So I scraped together $100 or so, bought a handful of supplies, made some for gifts and then told my friends and family about it and let them know it was for sale.

That was 5 years ago, and the business is still growing. I now have another family who makes and ships the products for me, because I didn’t have the time to keep up with production. If you’re interested in starting a similar business, I wrote all the details of how to get started in an inexpensive ebook called “How to Make Money Making and Selling Your Own Skin Products”. (Yeah, I know, I’m really bad at thinking of short titles.)