the bottles the starbucks drinks come in (fridge section of conv. stores) are great for bath salts. just get a can of spray paint to paint the lid, fill with salt, fragrance, and colour; viola!! glass etching kits are fairly cheap and you can to a design on the bottle.
i have people saving me the bottles after they drink the coffee beverage. that way the bottles are free!
Thanks for the ideas, guys 
I will probably be baking, and making some of my star-shaped sugar cookies (where the challenge is not eat them all yourself…)
Starving, I did mean creative writing, but it would be really hard to write one story on a Christmas theme to send to everyone, since my friend group is mixed between hard atheists and Christians, and writing 10 different stories is a little much in the time allotted 
My niece gave me a great pocket notebook a couple of years ago; it was about 4x6 and she decorated the cover herself. I think it was originally just plain canvas. I carry it in my purse to make notes of books I want to read and people’s e-mail addresses, etc. It couldn’t possibly have cost her more than $5 to make and it’s one of the most useful gifts I’ve ever gotten.
This is exactly what I popped in to suggest. We do oatmeal cookies in a jar and people love getting them. They just have to add butter / vanilla / egg and mix it all up and 15 minutes later they’re wolfing down their own homemade cookies.
The jars wind up being a bit less than a buck apiece. The ingredients cost maybe 2-3 bucks per jar if you can get them cheaply enough (I think we’ve calculated each jar costs us about 4 dollars to make all told including the jar itself). You’ll want to get a canning funnel to make it easier to load the jars.
We now do these assembly line. We clear off the kitchen island, and put bowlsful of each individual ingredient, with a dry measure or measuring spoon of the correct size in each bowl. The bowls are in the order in which the ingredients are to be layered. Each of us (the kids help now) grabs an empty jar and goes around the island and fills the jar. I think it took less than 2 hours to do 50+ jars last fall.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipes/Desserts/Cookies/Cookie-Mix-in-a-Jar/Main.aspx
has a lot of ideas. The one we use is this:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cookie-Mix-in-a-Jar-III/Detail.aspx
Here’s something my brother made for family members when he was flat broke: find some birch or pine logs in fireplace length (about 12") and about 5"-6" in diameter. If you can find them already split in half, you’re way ahead of the game. If not, either split them yourself or have a competent friend do it for you. You may have to do some trimming with a knife to get them fairly flat on one side Buy some cheap 10-12" Christmas-colored candles and some colored bows or ribbons or some of those bow/pinecone/holly/berry combos. Drill two shallow holes in the rounded half logs you split, about 3-4" apart. Staple the decorative foo-foo in between them. Melt a bit of wax into the holes and stick the candles in them. Instant holiday centerpiece. We used it for years after he gave it to us.
Have photos taken of you and your friends. Grab some cheap frames at the local thrift store. Add a little poem, even a lame one. Charming.
I’m on a budget this year too. Everyone is getting a set of magnets from me. This has been the easiest, most fun craft project I’ve ever done. I’ve made about 200 magnets in a week.
Here’s what I’m doing. Hit the dollar store and see if you can find clear decorative glass stones. The kind that people put in flower arrangements or aquariums. I’ve found them in several different sizes and even some of the colored stones work, but clear is still best.
Gather up all your old magazines, advertisements, and catalogs. Find pictures that fit the size of clear stones. This is a very forgiving project. I don’t measure or trace or anything. I just hold the stone over the picture and kinda cut around it. I’ve had good luck with quilting magazines for neat small pictures, and since lots of my friends are gamers, I scrounged up some old gaming and sci-fi mags at a thrift store.
You’ll need “Mod Podge” or a similar substance. If you don’t know what Pod Podge is, the craft store should know. It’s basically elmer’s glue that people use for decoupaging. I think Elmer’s would work fine as well. This is the most expensive thing about the project. It cost me about 6 bucks for a big jar of Mod Podge and it’ll last forever.
Glue the cut-out picture to the stone using the Mod Podge. I paint the stone with glue then smoosh the picture on there and kinda press it to make sure the wrinkles are out of the paper. Let it dry.
Use a hot glue gun to affix magnets to the back. I found magnets at JoAnn Fabric and Craft for $1.29 for 10 magnets.
So, you’ll need:
Clear glass floral/aquarium stones
Old magazines
Mod Podge or Elmer’s glue
Paint brush or sponge (or fingers if you don’t mind being messy)
Hot glue gun and glue sticks
Magnets
Here’s a picture of a few of the ones I’ve made. Sorry for the crappy cell phone quality.
And do you pay royalties to the songwriters, artists, and record companies for these copies you make?
Seconding this. My husband gets lots of candy and fattening baked stuff from his customers (he’s a mailman); they have something of an excuse as they may not be thinking about his weight. But my husband’s family knows he’s been trying to lose weight, and yet we get a ton of chocolate and other goodies for Christmas. A lot of it gets dropped off on the break tables at our workplaces.
Yes, of course. I fly to L.A. or New York, track them down one by one and stuff .16¢ into the pocket of every artist, assorted bandmember, songwriter, and record company employee from the CEO on down to the janitor.
Except for Joey Ramone; he’s dead now.
I was going to suggest this idea, but with paint in the inside of the ornament. Pour diluted acrylic paint inside the top of the ornament and move it to swirl the paint over the whole interior. Then write the person’s name, or “Merry Christmas” or whatever on the outside in metallic paint pen. Finish with a shiny ribbon to hang.
oh! nearly forgot… tampax angels!
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Tamarin**, those magnets are GREAT! I wish I were on your Christmas list.
I guess that means I’ll have to make my own. 
I don’t think there’s a Jo Ann’s close enough for me to get to, so could you tell me a little more about the magnets? About how big they are, if they’re some special material or just ‘ordinary’ magnets?
I see sets of magnets like those in local galleries in the $15 range. Of course they have a common theme and are in a little plastic box. I could see making a set with maps of exotic places, bright fruit, cute animals, comic book characters: a thrift store would have old books and magazines probably for the taking.
Look at [=tags&includes=title"]these](International Postmarks Glass Pebble Magnets Set of 6 - Etsy[) . . . they’re a buck apiece and I bet they didn’t cost a quarter each to make after you have the glue gun.
I am so stealing this idea for Christmas presents!
Those magnets are indeed cool!
Here’s a free gift you can send by e-mail. It is my favourite gift for people who live far away and have a baby. I go to a site like this one http://www.astro.com/horoscopes and get one of the free horoscopes. I copy and paste the text neatly in a word doc, and if I feel adventurous, I tailor the text a bit to the intended receiver. 
The instructions I’ve seen for those have always called for “disk magnets,” which are just round magnets about the size of your thumbnail. They come in packs of something like 50 for $2-3 in the craft department of Walmart or at any craft store in the country.
Thanks! I’m having a blast making them. We are testing out a new color laser printer at work, so I’ve been told I can print anything I want and as much as I want…so now I’m going to see what happens if I use laser printed pictures. 
The magnets are similar to these. I’ll double check the measurement on the ones I have at home and get back to you though.
Check out that etsy shop’s other items…she’s hot-glued thumbtacks to the back of some of them instead of magnets! I’m totally stealing that idea too!
The image is glued face up to the back of that marble, right?
