Quick Gift Ten

Ten Things You Can Make or Put Together as Last-Minute Holiday Gifts

Audio Car Package: Choose an audio book for your recipient, and package with a travel mug and some envelopes of their favorite hot beverage mix for a nice treat they can use the next time they head out on the road. One of my favorite all-time audio books is Powers That Be by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, marrated by Star Trek's own Marina Sirtis.

Book Stack: Buy your favorite novel series or some books in the same genre, stack, and tie a ribbon around them like they're a box. Use a bookmark as the gift tag. See some other fun ways to gift-wrap books over at Book Riot here.

Homemade Bread: One of our neighbors always gives us a loaf of her homemade bread as a holiday gift, and it's one of my favorite treats every year. Make your favorite bread, wrap in a pretty tea towel and place in an inexpensive bread basket. If they have kids, add some jars of peanut butter and jelly. Don't want to make a whole loaf of bread? Go for a batch of homemade cinnamon rolls, buttermilk biscuits, or garlic knots.

First Aid for Kisses Kit: Glue a piece of white cardstock to the top of a small empty tin. Write "First Aid Kit for" at the top of the cardstock and draw a lips puckered for a kiss in red marker below it. Fill the tin with a stick of lip balm, disposable mini toothbrushes and breath mints.

Framed Pic or Poem: Print out a nostalgic photo, or handwrite or print out a favorite poem, place in a pretty frame.

Pre-Addressed Book: Buy an inexpensive address book and fill it with the names, updated addresses and phone numbers of mutual family and friends. I honestly wish someone would do this for me.

Quick Fabric Placemats: For each placemat cut two 16" X 8" rectangles from matching or contrasting fabrics, pin together right sides facing out, sew 1/2" around the entire border, trim the edges with pinking sheers. You can do the same thing to make coasters; just downsize your fabrics to two 4" or 5" squares.

Sugar Scrub: Whip up a homemade batch of sugar scrub (click here for 21 recipes) and place in a mason jar. Write the ingredients on a notecard and tie with a piece of ribbon around the lid.

Tea Lover's Stocking: Fill an inexpensive stocking with individually-wrapped tea bags, a pretty mug, a jar of honey, a small package of cookies, etc. You can also make individually-wrapped tea bags into a wreath by following the directions over at Kojo-designs.com here.

Writer's Block: To making an uplifting paperweight, use an indelible marker to write short, encouraging phrases on a 4" square wooden block paperweight. For a more elaborate version, purchase a photo-frame block (like this one from Pier One) and insert inspiring quotes and photos in the frames.

Fake Covers, Real Inspiration

If you want to make up a cover for your NaNoWriMo novel (or any other story) but aren't feeling particularly inspired by anything, trying playing with this Fake French novel cover art generator.

Three of my results:



I really love the broken window and the open-book pages designs, and armed with my own camera I know I can come up with something very similar (or even better.) I'm not a huge fan of using museum art for book covers, but #3 might work for a more literary writer.

If you don't have a camera or aren't interested in photography, you can always look for similar images on stock photo sites like Dreamstime.com, BigStockPhoto.com or DepositPhotos.com (I found the cover image for my NaNo novel Lord of Midnight there.) Prices vary, but it's possible to find something (like mine) that works for around $1.00. Dreamstime.com offers free images, too, so if you're cash-strapped you might check there.

Holiday Ten

Ten Things to Make Your Holidays Fun

Before you toss out your old 2012 calendars, here's 5 ways to reuse them and a bunch of fun craft projects to make with them.

Cooking Light magazine has a nice collection of Christmas cookie recipes here that take a lighter approach to classic holiday treats.

This article on eco-friendly holiday gift wrapoffers some good tips on ways you can skip the pricey store-bought rolls and go green by recycling stuff around your house as wrapping material.

For those who would rather dodge the malls, here are Ten Things You Can Make as Last-minute Gifts

If you need a delicious treat or a sweet hostess gift but you don't want to haul out the candy thermometer, try my no-brainer fudge recipe here.

The Official NORAD Santa Tracker is keeping a countdown to the big night; this year they have a series of hidden interactive activities in their Christmas village for the kids to enjoy (click on the activities tab on the home page.)

Snowday's holiday classic Create a Snowflake site is celebrating their 10th year, and it's just as much fun as ever to make your own (virtual) snowflake.

Can you throw away Christmas cards? For some reason I can't, so I was glad to find Martha Stewart's nine crafty ways to recycle old Christmas cards.

Jacquie Lawson's animated e-card The Snow Dog is one of my favorite holiday stops.

Writer pals are not that tough to please; here's my ten list of gifts you can make for us.