Every Christmas, many moms struggle to pay for gifts. They can buy cheap trinkets, but they are unlikely to be appreciated. They can browse thrift stores and hope they get lucky in finding some worthwhile pieces, but they shouldn’t depend on that plan. A great solution is to be crafty and make Christmas gifts for friends and family.

Time, not money, is the investment when it comes to handmade gifts. Everyone always appreciates something that you spent a lot of time and energy creating. Handmade items are unique and heartfelt. Some women feel that giving people handmade items is cheap or tacky, but recipients often prefer meaningful gifts to expensive store-bought items. They know that genuine thought and care went into making the gifts.

Gifts can be even more special when they incorporate photos. Photo books make great gifts, especially since most people only use digital cameras these days. A mom who wants to make wonderful gifts that involve pictures should consider making photo books. There are many websites that do photo printing for small fees. This is nice because you don’t have to take pictures on actual film to create physical photos. Even the oldest photos or those taken from social networking websites can be uploaded and then printed. These images can be pasted into traditional photo albums or hand-decorated notebooks.

Gifts like this work best when there is some kind of theme involved and it doesn’t have to be grand or complicated, you just need to provide a little direction. These themes work especially well for sisters, cousins, and other female relatives who are likely to be sentimental.

Male relatives will prefer fun gifts like photo mugs. The more out of context the image is, the funnier the mug will be. Acquiring the photo could be tricky. One idea is to ask the boy’s mom or wife for a picture of when he was a baby. It will be tempting to choose the most embarrassing image in an effort to be funny, but it could be risky since some people don’t take that kind of joke well. In this case, it’s safest to choose an image that represents the man looking his best, even if it’s not as funny as the embarrassing images.

Photo mugs can be ordered online. Once the image is chosen, it can be uploaded to a website and printed on a regular coffee mug. These companies typically make mugs within a week of placing the order. Enterprising crafters can be even more thrifty if they glue the photo on a mug by hand.