Other good ideas:
Cookie/baking mixes. You put all the dry products into a jar, layer them up prettily (if they are different colours… like cocoa, or candies or whathaveyou) so they just have to add the wet and cook. Decorate the jars.
Baking. We have some real yummy things we bake only around Christmas and usually share out as some presents.
I’m always happy to get home canned goods from Grandma.
I did calendars for the extended family two years ago and they were a big hit. Not with photos, although I think that’s a great idea. I just didn’t have the time to go through all the pictures and dig up enough. So I used graphics from Print Shop. I included all the family birthdays and anniversaries, with years, and had them bound at Office Max. Which reminds me, I should get started on them again. I think I want to fancy them up a bit this year. And we have a couple new dates to add.
What about matching scarves and hats for the guys? Would they wear them? Or nice knit slipper bootie type things. If you have the yarn all you’d need for those might be vinyl or non-slip stuff for the bottom. If they’re sports fans you could do them in team colors or something like that. Stuff a plastic bag full of cookies or candy inside and it’s even better.
OK, some more great ideas. There’s a Big Lots by my husband’s work, so I’ll have to check that out for vessels. I also have a surplus of glass vases, from every time someone sends me flowers. I also just got a good deal on a bunch of epsom salts - I bet I could do “sand art” with different colored bath salt layers in the vases.
I also love the homemade scent diffuser - what a great idea!
Oh, and Cranky, one of my library books has a recipe for pistachio caramels, but sorry, I will be testing them out on ME. 
These are all really great gift ideas! One of my favorites is to go to the resale shop or garage sales. Pick up all the picture frames you can find (glass covered). Prime and paint or otherwise decorate them. Yarn, beads, gold leaf, whatever you have lying around. You can even drill holes in it and add macrame and beads around the edges. Include a personalized or cherished family photo and you’re all set!
Fill it with potpourri and some white Christmas lights, put a lid on it, plug in, voila - Christmas decoration that makes the house smell good (don’t use the extra bright lights - just regular). I made one for my mom a few years back.
I would like to take this opportunity to once again pimp my new favorite website www.instructables.com. There’s lots of ideas there. For example, do you have any chocolate loving geeks on your gift list? How about a Han Solo in Carbonite Chocolate Bar? It does take a little expense in the initial mold making but it could become a holiday tradition.
Great ideas everyone! I’m saving this thread for more ideas.
In the past I have given the cookie/soup mixes along with dried herbs that my mom grew and didn’t want. Made a great gift for the grandparents!
I’m big into scrapbooking, and am planning on making a few different things. Altered cookie sheet advent calendar, 2008 pocket planner, Christmas ornaments. Stuff like that.
I really liked the idea from whynot with the gift bask of herbal/essential oil producnts. I’m off to hunt down recipes for that. 
I am doing several homemade gifts this year for family. For one of my neices, I’ll be doing the doll clothes thing. For another who loves to draw, I’m making a sketch pad cover complete with pockets for artist pencils and an eraser. For a third, I’m making a crayon roll that holds 24 crayons and a coloring book or two.
Here’s an idea for a Barbie doll clothes organizer that went over really well. Take a 3 ring binder and decorate. I made a cover out of fake fur (pink, of course) along the lines of the new stretch book covers.
Then pick up several of the clear plastic pencil holders that are about the size of a sheet of paper and are punched to fit inside the binder. The ones I got had pink zippers that matched the fur. These can be decorated with stickers if you like.
Put the pockets into the binder…pick up a few cheap doll outfits and place them into the clear pockets. I had a pocket for shoes, one for shirts, one for shorts, etc. and of course she spent Christmas day adding her own barbie stuff into the appropriate pockets.
I’m another scrapbooker. I usually do a family calander with everybody’s birthdays and aniverseries on it (kid’s bd’s get their age included). I go with a different theme every year like The Mamas and the Papas (parent / child pics), babies or sisters. This year, I’m doing the heritage thing with some of the pics I’ve inherited.
I make one original (the folks get this one) then copy the rest on 8.5" X 11" pages with the body done up in Excel. The whole family enjoys them.
Now that’s cool. I wish I could think of someone to give one to.
I have an adult friend who is a Barbie collector. She goes to the conventions every year. She’d love it, but I’ll have to wait for her b’day to roll around, as we don’t exchange christmas gifts. I’ll have to include a vintage outfit for her, too!
I love the idea of consumable gifts, but in my experience I would steer away from soap unless you are making a particular scent that you know someone loves or something like that. I have so much soap/lotion/body wash/etc that I get as gifts every holiday season that it is now September and I still haven’t had to buy soap or body wash of my own this year. However, I go through shampoo and conditioner like it is oxygen, so if someone wanted to get me a consumable bath related gift shampoo and conditioner would be the way to go.
It may be too late to start on this one now, but if you have a book lover on your list, a HUGE BASKET O’ BOOKS (in the preferred genres/authors) is a wonderful present.
The trick is to pick up the books (and the baskets!) throughout the year at garage sales as you see them. Paperbacks go for about 25 cents, hardcovers maybe 50 cents – at least, you can generally bargain them down to that. 
Last year I gave my uncle over 40 Louis Lamour westerns, and my grandmother nearly 100 romances – the sweeter ‘old fashioned’ style, not the steamies – and both seemed to love it.
It turned out especially well for my grandmother. She’s pretty much confined to her bed in a nursing home, and was often lonely. She turned the books into “Mimi’s Lending Library” and now several times a day other residents come by to swap books and chat for a moment. She’s requested another basket of book for her birthday, asking for a mix of mysteries and spy and adventure type books this time. I think she wants bait to draw in the male residents. 
That’s a great idea! Another thing you might think about is Large Print books. There aren’t a lot of them, but my grandmother really appreciated them once her eyes started going.
I forgot to mention, one year I was going home for Christmas and found out that three women in their 20’s were going to be guests at my parents’ house (daughters of a friend).
I had never met them before, but figured I would bring them something.
I got large plastic containers, put a “Barbie Doll” in each (well, they weren’t really officially Barbie Dolls, but close to it) and then filled up the jar with various assorted candy and cheap little necklaces, etc. from the 99cent store. They were colorful and sort of fun and stupid, but I put them under the tree.
Two of the girls where there and they both went nuts over them and the dolls were a big hit (nostalgia, I think). At any rate, they must have phoned the other sister who was visiting a friend. As she came in the house, the first words out of her mouth were, “where’s the Barbie?!” and she tore off to the tree and got the jar. Once again, there was a wistful look in her eye and you could tell I must have touch a nerve in all of them as they just thought it was the coolest gift ever. They probably thanked me five times over the next two days.
Unauthorized Cinnamon, I’m one of those people that try to keep their house as clutter-free as possible. If I got a knitted or wooden thingy that wasn’t usable/perishable and wasn’t flat enough to be pasted in a scrapbook, you wouldn’t have given me a gift, but you would have given me a big problem. I’d have the choice between disappointing you, or keep clutter around that, if it wasn’t to my taste.
How about giving giving creative, (home-made) gift-certificates instead? Library cards? Massage-coupons? Selfmade certificates to come over and babysit, to help move & paint (if they have a move come up this year); to arrange a trip for a couple?
Or you could assemble a DIY kit if the person likes being creative(as you do) but doesn’t know how to start. For instance: a copied recipy they love when you make it, including the hard to get spices and “secret ingredients” needed for it. Or a book on origami, with a starter set or paper. Or a little box of games and puzzles, that tired parents can whip out during long car rides or during a kid’s illness to keep their kids busy - and your ideas to fill that box might be totally different from what the parents themselves might have thought of. WhyNot’s idea of a herbal box of cold medicine also falls in this category.
In the category of perishables, vinegars are also good. Pretty bottle - good quality vinegar - add twigs of decorative fresh herbs like garlic, estragon or dill - nicely flavoured X-mas gift.
i’ve done the lights in glass thingy with small glass ornaments instead of potpourri. thanks for the tip, the coworkers will have a variation on a theme this year!
Those little lights, when they aren’t LEDS, can get quite warm. If you put them in an tight container amidst oiled wood shavings and leafs (which is what potpourri amounts to) wouldn’t that be something of a fire hazard?
That risk is nihil with non-flammable things like steel wool or glass knicknacs/pebbles, of course.
