Natural DIY gifts that will be ready for the holidays!

Updated for X-mas 2024! 

I absolutely did not plan on writing a new gift guide for this year, especially one with homemade gifts! Then I was asked by a family member if I knew of any good DIY natural gifts that weren't 'cheesy' that I could teach them to make. Being short on money and not wanting to go to all the stores this year makes it hard to shop for Christmas gifts!

I thought about it and I know with this crazy year we've had, a lot of other people are in that situation too. So I decided to compile a list of my natural gift tutorials.

With the exception of the homemade vanilla extract these are all very affordable. As of right now, I have 15 of my own gifts you can make on this list, but I will add to it as I write more. I'll also add the craft tutorials from my chicken keeping blog, but you can use any feathers for these.

DIY homemade cuticle oil recipe

I have had really nice nails for a long time. I've taken care of my cuticles and nails by rubbing cuticle oil into them several time a week, for the last 30 years! It started when my mom went on a trip and came back with a bottle of cuticle oil from a local shop. Of course I ran out eventually and tried just about every cuticle product I could buy before settling on my own recipe for homemade cuticle oil.

I like making things at home for many reasons, but the main one being that there are not a ton of chemicals added. There is enough toxins in everyday life I don't need to be rubbing them into my hands. My favorite recipe for cuticle oil has only two ingredients and neither one is toxic! 

The main ingredient is sweet almond oil. 

Skin healing hand butter DIY

How many times have you washed your hands this week? If it's anything like me, well...I lost track long ago! One of the problems with washing your hands so often though is it depletes the skin's natural oils making the skin dry. Skin this dry requires a seriously moisturizing cream. Unfortunately when we can't run to the store for every single thing and we're out of hand cream what do we do? Make our own! 

I know now is not exactly the time to run out shopping for ingredients either so I'm using what I have on hand. I'll link to where ya'll can order the same ingredients online. I will also list several options in case you have one type of butter or oil but not another. 

I wish I could use super common ingredients like coconut oil, but I just don't like it for this type of project.

I used to have a love affair with coconut oil, just like everybody else did for a while there. Unfortunately it's too greasy on my skin. Maybe in the winter I could get away with using it, but any other time of year it felt like it just didn't sink into my skin. I felt like I constantly had slimy, oily skin.

Now that's not for things like my burn salve because in that instance you want them to stick around for awhile and not sink right into the skin. Salves have a bit of protective quality to them, like a barrier on your skin. Lotions and creams though need to sink in to do their job. 

Homemade hand sanitizer

When my daughter was little she was obsessed with glitter gel. I wouldn't let her have it because it was so full of chemicals. Then I came up with the idea of adding glitter to aloe vera gel. Aloe vera is completely skin safe and can be made without extra chemicals. Well from all my research about aloe vera I know that it is antibacterial and antiviral. So basically aloe has almost everything you need to make your own hand sanitizer. Plus it's skin safe.

Of course it's antibacterial and antiviral properties are mild compared to alcohol which damages the bacteria or viruses thus killing them. So after my daughters obsession with glitter gel wore off I started using the leftover product that we had made as hand sanitizer.

I'm way into essential oils and one of my favorite essential oils is tea tree oil. Tea tree or melaleuca oil, is known for its antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal properties. Combine this essential oil with rubbing alcohol and aloe gel and you have the perfect recipe for homemade hand sanitizer. 

MYO herbal bath blends

Well, Valentine's day is coming. It's really not a big thing for me to show someone I love them on that specific day, but you know what is? Showing love to myself! Taking care of myself by taking some time to relax and pamper myself. So this year instead of spending the big day at a restaurant, I'm going to be spending time in my bathtub! There is nothing more relaxing than a nice hot, herbal bath with a good book and a candle flickering nearby. 

I have several different types of herbal baths I like to mix up. Some of these recipes are really simple and other require quite a few ingredients. 

If you don't have exactly what I use, in many cases other herbs or salts can be substituted. Don't worry though...I'm going to give you a whole list of bath additions and benefits of each to save and/or print out! The beauty of the herbal bath is that you can often make it work with what you have on hand.

Soothe a sunburn with a tea bath!

There is nothing more uncomfortable in the summer then a sunburn! Of course I have the kid that never listens to me about sunscreen and thanks to his Irish dad, he burns every time he even thinks of going in the sun. 

Guess who wouldn't put sunscreen on at the parade last weekend? I'll give you a hint...it's the same kid who complained about his sunburn all evening but didn't want to put aloe gel on it because it's "sticky".

Not only is he stubborn about the sunscreen and the aloe, he's also old enough to not want to be fussed over by mom. He doesn't want something that needs reapplied a bunch of times, he wants a one shot fix it type of deal. So I need a 'hands off' type of cure! 

Luckily I can get him to take a bath so I just brew up some herbal bathtub tea and it helps to soak the burn away.

The first time I made a sunburn bathtub tea soak, I just used a few teas bags of black tea. The tannic acid in black tea helps to pull the heat out of the burn and I had read that it helps with extreme burns so I tried it for a sunburn. 

It really helped take the heat out of the sunburn so I've used this method several times since.

The more I grew and used herbs the more I started incorporating them into everything I do and this was no different. I have lots of herbs on hand that are known to soothe skin irritation so I decided to add them to my bathtub teas. 

Calendula, plantain, lavender, rose petals, yarrow and even chamomile have made many appearances in my bathtub teas and trial and error is how I came to the current recipe I use.

Make your own Calendula skin salve

My son has weird hands. No one can figure out exactly why but every winter the skin gets very dry (only the backs) and actually start to crack and bleed! It's been happening for about 7 years now. It finally occurred to me to make him an herbal salve from Calendula and his hands have been healing up quite nicely!

Calendula (Calendula officinalis) has marvelous skin healing properties and I've had him soak his hands in cooled Calendula tea which has helped soothe it a bit, but never quite healed completely. 

This happens to him every winter and it lasts until spring, then it miraculously goes away. Weird I tell you! About the only lotion that worked without burning was that Working Hands stuff from the store, but it's loaded with chemicals. 

I finally decided that since the tea helped a little, I needed to find a way to keep the Calendula on his hands and I would have to make him a salve.

I love using the herbs I grow to make things! I had already made Calendula oil from flowers this summer so I just had to come up with a way to use it on his skin. 

I decided to add beeswax to thicken it and coconut oil as a moisturizer, plus a dash of Tea Tree essential oil since it has such great healing properties.

This recipe doesn't make a very big batch, but it's enough to last him all winter...and I use it for my hands in summer since all the washing and scrubbing garden dirt off dries them out so badly. It's also amazing on dry/cracked heels! 

I don't tend to use big batch recipes though, because I like to make this as I need it so it's always fresh. Since homemade salves and body care products do not contain added preservatives, then tend to go bad after awhile. 

By making only small batches I use them up before they go bad!

MYO body scrub (low price, spa quality!)

I love to make my own bath and body care products for many reasons, the main reason being that I can control things like consistency or scent. It bothers me how many chemicals there are in your typical drugstore body care products. Making them myself means I can add exactly what I need without excess preservatives, colorings and such. I can also make a brand new scrub any time I want, without having to drive to the store!

The first time I made a hand scrub scrub I used liquid soap. Sounds weird, I know...but it really cleans stains well. Especially the gross stains I get from cleaning chicken coops and gardening! Over the years though I have experimented with various ingredients to make my own body scrubs. Now I don't even add soap. 

Seriously! I got the idea from a lip scrub that I bought in a store. Using it I realized that it had no soap or detergent type product, just oil, sugar and color. That's honestly all that you need...though many of those types need washed off, which adds another step to your process.

I've been dabbling in homemade beauty products for probably a dozen years now. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some Lush...but I'm cheap remember? So while I love the smell of loveliness that high end natural beauty products have, I know I can make it much cheaper (and healthier) myself. 

When you make your own body scrubs, hand butter, lip balms, creams, cuticle oil etc. you can also control just how much chemical your body comes in contact with too. Did you know that your skin is your body's largest organ? It absorbs the stuff we put on it, and I'm just not comfortable putting tons of chemicals on my skin on a regular basis. Are you?

Body scrubs are one of the easiest body care products to make at home and very customizable. You can use sugar OR salt! Since there are no added preservatives I only mix up enough for a few weeks at a time, though I have stored these for a year or more and they were fine. (ok...I forgot they were there! lol)

Point is, they do keep if you make a bit too much!