What's the difference between homemade gifts and hand-crafted gifts?

presentation

A homemade gift is shoved in a box with no afterthought to how it's presented. But a hand-crafted gift is "finished" with a nice label, a cute wrapper or nice tie/ribbon, and it might just look like something you'd pick up at a craft fair. At least that's my definition.

Presentation indicates the time, love and thought put into the gift.

As I'm finishing making something, I start to plan in my head how I'll put the final touches on the gift. how I'll package it, will I put a label on it or just a nice ribbon, what kind of ribbon do I have on hand to use, or will I need to "make" my own ribbon -- those kinds of plans.

Remember the dish cloths for my step-mom? Here, they are, finished. I made a set of 3 dish cloths to go with other items, for her. I could have put the 3 into a gift box, maybe with tissue paper. And that would have looked okay, not bad, but okay.

Or, I could take just a few minutes and "finish" the gift, with a nice presentation.

I didn't have a ribbon I wanted to use, so I made my own.

Yes, you can make ribbon!

I used a 3-inch strip of fabric, long enough to wrap around the bundle of wash cloths. I sewed the fabric scrap into a long tube, turn it right side out, and pressed smooth. After tying this new ribbon around the bundle of cloths, I clipped the ends to length, and tuck the raw edges into the tube, finger-pressing the edges nicely. Took all of 5 minutes to make, but it really adds to the presentation of the gift.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers with a full garden

Friday

Grilled cheese sandwiches and apple wedges

Saturday

Black bean and chicken soup, topped with
Broken tortilla chips and cheddar cheese
Fresh blackberries

Sunday

Kale, olive and mushroom frittata smothered in marinara sauce
Brown rice
Apple wedges
French bread and butter
Blackberry pie

Monday

Bean burgers
Garden potatoes, pan-fried
Beet greens and Swiss chard sauteed with shallots and garlic in bacon fat
Apple and pear salad
Leftover blackberry pie

Tuesday

Leftover bean burgers
Lazy lasagna
Apple wedges
Cole slaw
Chocolate cake squares

Wednesday

A church dinner and speaker -- we had a chicken and pasta dish, green salad and garlic bread

Thursday

Black beans and rice skillet dinner
Sauteed garden kale and cabbage
Pickled beet salad
Steamed carrots
Fruit salad


It's been another week of lots of garden produce. I used cabbage, kale, Swiss chard, garlic, shallots, beets, carrots, apples, pears, blackberries, green beans, potatoes, and various herbs from our garden this week. This means I've not done much in the way of grocery shopping, in over a week. I've spent just under $50 on food, for the month of August, so far. The only difficulty is harvesting and cleaning the garden vegetables. They don't come out of the ground all clean and perfect!

I'm also quite busy these days. Some days, dinner isn't all that much. I try to make up for it by cooking lots on the other days.

I hope your week went well, and you're enjoying lots of summer produce. What was on your menu this past week? Do you have any favorite August fruits or vegetables?


(if you're not following the prices comparisons for making hand-crafted soap -- have a great weekend, and just skip the rest!)
More on gift-making, for the soap:

While the goats milk melt and pour soap was best priced at Michael's with a coupon, I've found some honey almond fragrance oil at Hobby Lobby, which is cheaper than either Michael's or Amazon. It's $3.99 for 1 ounce. There's a Hobby Lobby 40% off coupon online, good through tomorrow, Saturday, August 13. Hobby Lobby is in the same complex as Trader Joe's, on my errand route, so no extra stop for me. 40% off, leaves me with a cost of under $2.50 for this fragrance oil.

Otherwise, Michael's is a good deal on the fragrance oil, if using a high value coupon. Michael's almond fragrance oil is $4.99. In comparison, Amazon has Barnhouse fragrance oils, priced at $2.95/bottle, but there's a $2.94 shipping charge, bringing the final price up to $5.89. It's actually a few cents cheaper to go directly through Eternal Essence Oil's website. Eternal Essence Oil's price is the same as Amazon's, but their shipping is only $2.89.

So, Hobby Lobby, with 40% off coupon, best price in my area. Michael's, next best, Amazon's price the highest on this ingredient.

Also, for anyone wanting to make large quantities of melt and pour soap, like 100 bars (I'm thinking wedding favors, sort of quantity), there are a couple of sources for melt and pour goats milk soap at a decent price (better than Amazon's prices in that quantity). Brambleberry.com has 25-lb blocks that sell for $39 plus about $20 shipping, for my area (shipping charges likely vary according to destination). I have been thinking about large quantities of melt and pour soap, to use as favors, at a future event. For me, @ $60 for the soap base, which would yield 100 bars of soap, my cost per bar would be about 70 cents, once the extra ingredients were factored in. Just an FYI, in case large quantities of melt and pour soap are what you're interested in making.