My Neighbor Holiday Gifts: Past and Present

With all the fab ideas on Pinterest and around Blogland, it's so easy to come up with fun handmade gifts for friends, neighbors and teachers.  Here's a recap of some of the gifts I've made–maybe you'll want to try one of them!

One year (before I even had a blog) I made these PEPPERMINT STRIPED SOAPS from Martha Stewart.  You can find the directions here.  These are a bit time-consuming, but well worth the effort.  If you attempt to make these, make more than you need, because some of the stripes in the bars did fall apart.

Another year, I made a FELT ORNAMENT.  This was also inspired by one I saw on Martha Stewart. I followed this basic tutorial here, but then added my own embellishments.

Last year was my favorite project: a HAND-BEADED PIE SERVER with a pie. :)  You can find the full post on that here.

And this year, I'm making CANDY CANE PEPPERMINT SUGAR SCRUB.  It's easy and it can be done in big batches.

There are loads of sugar scrub recipes around.  I used the one I posted here.  I made two batches; added a drop of red food coloring to one batch to get the pink stripe.  Some people use raspberry juice to get the red color, but I didn't want anything to interfere with the peppermint scent.  And I used FREE tags from The Scrap Shoppe Blog here to make the label on top and the gift tag.

What are your DIY gifts for the holidays?  I'd love for you to share!