Having recently talked about the second-hand Christmas ‘trimmings’ in our house I thought I would post about the pre-loved presents I have bought (and made) this year. As you may know, from other posts, I do buy second-hand gifts but only for those people whom I think would appreciate, or not care, that it is re-used. This year my charity shop gift buying has focused on my children – interspersing pre-loved gifts with new ones.

As always I have raided the bookshelves of some of the local charity shops to give a selection to the girls.

My twelve year old will have the Hilary McKay and Cathy Cassidy books. I’m going to introduce the Amelia Jane books to my six year old. All these books were from the same Dorothy House shop and cost just 20p each! My eight year old is really into real life mysteries so I ordered a second-hand book for her online (which hasn’t arrived yet, uh oh!).

My eldest requested a jewellery tree and I picked this one up for £2 from the local PDSA shop:

As well as second-hand presents we have been making our own to give to neighbours, teachers and school friends.

This week I helped my eight year old make these cushions for a couple of her friends:

She also made some holly leaf decorations, sewing very carefully up the spine of each leaf:

And some bath salts, using dried rosemary and lavender from the garden:

Finally we all made these very chocolatey biscuits for neighbours:

I’ve also sneaked in a couple of extra ‘home-made’ presents for my youngest two. I’ve found some great free printable paper dolls online (via pinterest). I’ve printed them on thick card and they look very adorable:

Of course there were other presents that I intended to make but I feel I am running out of time. There are a couple of projects I want to work on in the New Year as we have quite a few family birthdays in January and February. In the meantime the presents are wrapped (using our recycled brown parcel paper), and waiting for Christmas Day…