I’m one of those annoying people who everyone hates – the person who does all their Christmas shopping / planning before October. I do this because I love giving gifts, and I don’t want to spend most of December stressing about it. I want the whole process to be fun. So I keep an eye out, and when I see that perfect thing or think of that perfect craft project,

Why do my presents never look so neat and tidy?

But sometimes, I forget people. Sometimes, those people are quite important, and for whatever reason – usually what my husband calls a Brain Fart – they just totally illude my radar. Sometimes, like this year, CDH and I go overseas to Europe and the Middle East and do all our Christmas Shopping over there, and because we’re on holiday everything seems really awesome and expensive. And then we get home and realise some of our gifts aren’t going to cut it. We need “Gift padders”.

And here I am, with a week before Christmas and a couple of forgotten people and a few gift-padders, and NO money. NONE. Therefore, I am thinking industriously, and if you’re a little crafty or creative or fun, you might benefit from some of these ideas too.

Top Ten Last-Minute Homemade Heavy Metal Christmas Gifts

1. Homebaked goodies never, EVER go amiss. biscuits, chocolates, preserves, breads, cakes … it will be gobbled up with abandon. You can probably find the ingredients for a basic chocolate chip biscuit – flour, white sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, chocolate chips – in your pantry, all ready to turn into something delicious for your loved ones. Wrap up in cellophane with a nice bow.
2. If your culinary skills extend to writing gross autopsy lyrics for your gore metal band, why not write a funny Christmas song and get some musician friends to help you record it, than distribute it to all your friends and family. Make a humorous CD sleeve to go with it.
3. Create a homemade card. I always make cards like little comic strips, with something funny that’s happened throughout the year.
4. If you’re known as the culinary genius among your ilk, write out a short cookbook of your favorite recipes, tips and tricks. Fill it with pictures of previous parties, and you making silly faces while you make vol-u-vants in your Slayer t-shirt.
5. Create a memory scrapbook for the year. Memories mean more to people than more store-brought Junk
6. CDH and I get these huge collage posters printed up for our friends, with a selection of 50 photos from all throughout the year, and they hang them on the wall. You can get these for quite cheap from Snapfish, and they deliver super-quick.
7. Paint or draw a picture and have it framed
8. Write a short story (or a novel if you’re a fast writer) about a crazy adventure, starring the intended gift recipient. I’ve done this on three seperate occasions and – barring one for my ex I mentioned in the Heavy Metal Christmas post, they’ve been incredibly well-recieved. One, called ‘Rock Star: Mayhem” and starring every single one of my friend, was a 40k novel. We had two “Dramatic Readings” where my friends all got together and I read out the magnum opus in a dramatic voice and friends cheered when their names came up. You can’t buy that kind of awesome.
9. Give Vouchers. I don’t mean “$25 at Glassons” kind of vouchers, I mean “Good for Seven Free Hugs from Steff” and “1 hour of listening to you whine about your latest boyfriend issues without rolling my eyes ONCE” vouchers.
10. If your a gardener, give seedlings to others so they can discover the joy of watching a plant grow too. I would give fruit and vegetable plants, like strawberries, tomato or gourgette, so they can nibble away at the fruits of their labour!

Readers, what are you doing for last-minute Christmas Gifts?

I’m off to bake some (grymm and frostbitten, of course) biscuits!
Steff Metal