20 Last Minute DIY Christmas Gifts

If you have waited until the last minute to get your Christmas presents together AND you are crazy enough to want to make gifts, you have stumbled upon the right place. I have a round up of 20 DIYs that make great gifts. They are all pretty easy and not too time consuming. Some of these posts go from many years back because we've been running this blog for THIRTEEN YEARS!! I honestly can't believe it. 

1. Grown Up Friendship Bracelets

What's great about these is there are endless ways to customize them. You could add charms and do any color combo that your heart desires. The metal clasps at the end make them more "grown up" and would be a great gift for any lady in your life. 

2. Elevated Scrunchie

You can use this tutorial to make a regular scrunchie or you can make it with the scarf/bow ends hanging down. I think that detail makes this look at little more sophisticated than a traditional scrunchie. This is the perfect project for using up fabric scraps you may have. It also makes the perfect stocking stuffer!

3. Bath Bomb

The only thing holding you back from making bath bombs before Christmas is the bath bomb mold. BUT you could use a muffin tin or any of the cute small molds that they sell everywhere this time of year. This makes another great stocking stuffer.

4. Flannel Napkins

You could make these napkins with thrifted flannel shirts, sheets, or you could buy new fabric. We love having cloth napkins around as they are much more eco friendly than disposable napkins/paper towels. Also with little effort they can make any dinner table look classier. 

5. Crochet Headband

When we first made this tutorial these were more in style to wear out in public as an accessory. Now, I love it for keeping your hair out of your face when doing you skin care routine and/or makeup. This is inexpensive to make and easy to customize. 

6. Crayon Lipstick

This DIY is so fun and would be a great activity to do after all the excitement of Christmas has worn off or you could make it as a gift. Crayons are naturally non-toxic and you can make any lipstick color your heart desires. 

7. Candles

Everyone loves candles and what is fun about making your own is picking out a fun vessel. Last year we gave homemade candles as Christmas gifts to our friends & family. I loved looking through thrift & antique stores looking for fun vessels. We also had fun coming up with a custom scent. 

8. Tiered Tray

When I was going through our blog and came across this DIY from 11 years ago, I said to myself, "oh this is good." Sometimes when I look back at our old blog posts & DIYs I cringe. But this one has stood the test of time. I always see pretty dishes at thrift stores where there is only one and this DIY makes the perfect use of those. You could easily do this whole DIY with thrifted items and I love that! It could be used to hold jewelry like how we have it pictured here but you cold also do large plates and it could be used as serving ware. 

9. Sugar Hand Scrub

Of everything on this list, this hand scrub is probably the one best suited for a very last minute gift situation. You likely have everything you need to make this in your home. It is also is genuinely magical and leaves your hands feeling so soft. 

10. Lip Balm 

Everyone loves lip balm especially this time of year. Since you've waited until the last minute, you may not be able to find these tubes for your lip balm. But you can pour the mixture into any small container you may find. 

11. Magazine Envelopes

Maybe you are giving gift cards this year but want to personalize the presentation. Well I have the tutorial for you. You can make your own envelopes with magazine pages, book pages, newspaper, scrap book paper, etc. 

12. No Sew Tote

This wouldn't be my choice of design today, but I love the idea! One thing I was shocked to find out was that the reusable totes they sell at grocery stores actually don't have a much better ecological footprint than plastic grocery sacks b/c of their manufacturing process. But everyone has old t-shirts laying around and there are a million at thrift stores. 

13. No Sew Turban from a T-shirt

This blog post comes from when we were in our neon phase. This is another option for using materials you already have at home. I also love this for wearing to keep your hair out of your face when doing your skin care or makeup. 

14. Pillowcase Bag

Here is another way to make a tote but this one requires some sewing. It is a beginner friendly sewing project and requires only a pillowcase. 

15. Macrame Bracelet 

Are we still doing bracelet stacks? I still like to wear a few at the same time but not the 10 I used to wear all at once. This bracelet is a nice on it's own or would go well with with a bangle or a variety of other bracelets. We have 1000 bracelet tutorials (linked below) so make a bunch and give them as gifts :) 

16. Beaded Bracelets

We have a multitude of bracelet tutorials on our blog, because over the years they have been uber popular.  If you are looking for other bracelet tutorials try this Crazy Complicated Friendship Bracelet, Heart Friendship Bracelet, The Ultimate Friendship Bracelet, or The Removable Friendship Bracelet. 

17. Table Runner

You know what would make a great gift? This table runner paired with the cloth napkins from #4. This is an easy sewing project and another one where you could source your fabric from a variety of places. Fabric can be expensive and you may be like us without many options to source fabric locally. Now anytime we're somewhere that sells sheets, we look for 100% cotton sheets in printed fabrics. We've also bought plain white cotton sheets that we've dyed, and I can always find these at thrift stores. 

18. The Five Minute Pillow

We thought we were geniuses when we came up with this idea for making a pillow. You might wonder how on earth you could make a pillow in 5 minutes, and you'll have to read the post to find out! 

19. Zippy Pouch

Savannah made 13 of these this year for her family (hopefully they aren't reading this). For the men she chose canvas fabric in both black & tan. For the women she chose a variety of fun printed fabrics and on the zipper pull we hung tassels and little beaded charms with their initials on it. They turned out so cute! These pouches are something that is easy to personalize and for men especially, not something they'd necessarily buy for themselves but could use. 

20. Block Stamped Kitchen Towel

I am happy to report that almost 9 years later and we still own this kitchen towel and it's one of my favorites. This was a sponsored post but you could make this towel using any stamp you like and a soft fabric paint. 

Thank you for reading! We hope you have been inspired and have found a few ideas for DIY Christmas gifts for your friends & family. Merry Christmas to you and yours!! 

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DIY Holiday Cordless Lamp Shade

*This post contains affiliate links.

I was introduced to this idea by something I saw in a store and I knew I wanted to recreate it for our cordless lamp. We bought this lamp a couple of years ago because we love the idea of being able to move it around to places where we need it without it needing to be plugged in. If you can make sure to charge it every few days, it'll work great for you! Anyway, this cordless lamp shade is easy and almost free to make and can be changed out every season or holiday.

All you need to gather for this project is the stencil, scrapbook paper of your choosing, scissors and some tape. You may prefer double sided, but I'll get into that a little later.

This is the exact stencil I used for our lamp shade and you can just download it/ save it. The square should measure 1" x 1" when printed and it should print across two sheets.

First you will need to cut out your stencil. This is the time you will want to make sure the stencil fits around your lamp. You can create your own new stencil based on this one if you need to make it bigger. But if your lamp is smaller, it can just be overlapped.

Once your stencil is correct, trace it onto your scrapbook paper. If you can get the thicker kind of scrapbook paper that would work better, but any will do. You can even use wrapping paper as I did for a Christmas themed one.

It should look something like that.

When you roll up the paper and meet the top edges and the bottom edges it should look like a lamp shade.

Wrap the paper around your lamp shade and tape the edges together. They will overlap a little and that is how it is supposed to be. Just overlap as much as you need to and tape it together. I used a gift wrapping tape that disappears and as you can see, it's almost indistinguishable. I like this over double sided tape because I can cut the tape at the seam and store the shade flat when I want to put it away. If you use double sided tape it would be hard to separate the edges without ripping the paper, but it is possible! Up to you.

And you have an adorable lamp adding a nice little touch to each season.

Because we taped the lamp shade to itself, it will lift off very easily from the lamp.

I decided to make a few of these at the same time so I can have them ready for the next few seasons without having to go into DIY mode every time I want to change the lamp shade.

And here is the Christmas plaid one- I love it! 

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6 Elements of A Perfectly Decorated Halloween Porch

After spending the past three years working on completing the inside of our home (and still not being done!) we finally decided it was time for us to be able to decorate for the seasons. Before we lived off grid, we really enjoyed decorating and spent a lot of time on this blog sharing that journey. So we are happy to be back doing something we love to do and love to share.

1. Something you made. First off, I made these witch hats that were inspired by an Anthropologie item I saw this year. They were much pricier than I wanted and I wanted them to light up. You can see how I made these from Christmas trees here.

2. Something unique. We found these copper pumpkin cauldrons at our local Home Goods and had to have them. The backside of them are solid so when Halloween is over they can be turned around and still be a nice fall decoration. I don't think they were intended to be planters, but that's how we are using them. We just kept our mums in the planters they were already in, wrapped them in some lights and popped them in the cauldron.

3. A classic layered rug moment. Definitely not original, but something we personally love and change out seasonally. We have a few different colored larger plaid rugs that go under the foot wiping rugs and they are washable so we can keep washing and using them. A rug by the front door is crucial to our tiny home life because they amount of dirt 2 people and 2 dogs can bring in is WILD!

4. A classic pumpkin stack. If you can find a farm near you who sells pumpkins, you are going to get a better price and better quality and unique pumpkins. Try to steer away from buying your pumpkins from big box stores, if possible. The two top pumpkins actually started out fully green and have changed colors on the porch. This was fun to see and now they look very quirky. In the back of the stack we have a vine pumpkin that lights up to add a little sparkle up front.

5. Spooky details. To turn up the Halloween vibe on the porch, you'll want some things that are less fall specific and more spooky. These giant spiders came from Dollar Tree but you can also buy them here.

Another spooky detail we wanted to create that this whole porch decoration was sort of born out of was a tree with crows sitting in it. For this we pulled limbs out of the woods and attached them to our porch. Check out the process in the short video below.

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These are the exact crows we purchased. We used hot glue and the wire already attached to them to get them to sit upright on the branches. 

6. A themed wreath. I made this wreath out of a grapevine wreath, some sticks, a toy snake, and some homemade ribbon. It's simple but sweet.

Our final details were these floating candle lights that are inspired by Harry Potter. I love them so much and can't wait to integrate them into our Christmas decorations. They are attached by a fishing line so they look like the are floating and it adds such a magical touch.

To top it off, the lights are activated by a wand that also lights up itself. They are so fun to turn on and off even for adults! See them in action below!

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I hope we gave you some ideas for your Halloween porch, or even your fall or Christmas porch. Pin the image above for inspiration at a later date. Happy Holidays!

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DIY Black Vine Witch Hat

The first halloween decoration I saw this year was a black witch hat made out of vines and I knew I wanted to have one. The only problem is I wanted multiple and they were fairly pricey- they were from Anthropologie after all. So I set on a mission to DIY one myself. This is the simplest way I figured out how to do it.

For these DIYs you will need: (These are affiliate links.)

- Christmas tree form

- Wire wreath

- Hot glue

- Grapevine garland (or foraged vines)

- Zip ties

- Jute Rope

- Black Spray Paint

- Fairy Lights

- Fishing Line

The Christmas trees I bought in person at Old Time Pottery as they always have Christmas things out. One of them had lights already installed in it so it was $9.99. It would be more price effective to find the Christmas trees without the lights (like these ones) and then add the lights on at the end. The red one didn't have lights and was only $6.99. 

Anyway, the first this I'm doing is zip tying the bottom of the Christmas tree to the wire wreath. I'm using black ones specifically so they blend in when we paint later.

I ended up putting 4 on each,  sort of equally distanced. Make sure that the zip tie is attached the wire fram of the Christmas tree and not just the rope and garland wrapped around it.

For the taller Christmas tree I put together two different sized wire wreaths.

I gave them the same zip tie treatment. Four equally spaced and we are good to go!

Since this one has lights on it, I made sure the plug was going through the middle and not above the wire wreath.

Now it is starting to look like something resembling a witch hat. 

On another note, sometimes you can find witch hat frames already made in this shape (but obviously halloween colors) but I think it just really depends on the styles that are out that year. This year I looked at every Box store, dollar store, discount store and more in two different cities and could not find a single one.

Then I decided the white balls wrapped around the Christmas tree could be easily removed, so I took that off and saved it for another project. 

I'm doing two versions of the witch hat. For the red one I am adding jute rope at the bottom as it will match the top pretty well. I tied the end of the rope to the bottom of the Christmas tree and started wrapping it around. It took a good amount of layers for it to finally start reaching out toward the next hoop of wire.

I'm using hot glue to attach the rope to the wire and to itself. In between the wires I attached the rope to itself until a row was close enough to the wire to glue it there.

For the other one I am using dried grapevines that I unrolled from a wreath. I'm wrapping it around the bottom just like the previous one except the grapevines cannot be held by hot glue. I used only zip ties to attach the grapevine. I used about 4 ft. lengths that I cut off the wreath and attached one end to the bottom wire with a zip tie. Then I slowly wrapped the grapevine around and about half way around added another zip tie. It's a little particular to get it started, but once you do, the other pieces attach much easier.

I think I ended up using 4 4ft.(ish) lengths to make it look as full as I wanted. Of course, I could've added more grapevine to the top, but in the end I didn't really think it was necessary. But if you want it to be more concentrated, just wrap your hat as much as you'd like.

Another option is to buy a grapevine wreath in the correct size for your tree and zip tie them together. It would make this so easy! The only difference would be that the wreath is a little more dense and neat whereas this one looks more oganic and natural. Just depends on the look you are going for in your decoration.

Now of course the red witch hat could not stay like this, it needed to be painted. You could keep the natural grapevine color of the other one if you like that look.

But when I started making these I knew I wanted them to be black, so I spray painted them. Side note: spray painting something with glitter on it was very interesting. I guess I've never done such a thing before? Because I was surprised to see that the red glitter really resisted the black paint when I first sprayed it. But I let it dry and then put a second coat on. That coat finally covered the glitter. 

And one more tip: you'll want to spray the inside of the hat too as the color on the inside can be seen from the outside too. Especially if your Christmas tree is bright red like mine. 

I wrapped these fairy lights around the hats for some added magical-ness. They are battery operated so the battery pack can be hot glued to the inside of the hats. And because my plan was always to hang these on my porch, I tied a fishing line loop around and through the top of the hat.

If you want to see the rest of our Halloween porch this year and all the DIYs we did for it, please check out this blog post!

Happy Halloween!

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