Every Christmas, many moms struggle to pay for gifts. They can buy cheap trinkets, but they are unlikely to be appreciated. They can browse thrift stores and hope they get lucky finding some worthwhile pieces, but they shouldn’t depend on that plan. A great solution is to be crafty and make Christmas gifts for friends and family.

Time, not money, is the investment when it comes to handmade gifts. Everyone always appreciates something you spent a lot of time and energy creating. Handmade items are unique and sincere. Some women feel that giving people handmade items is cheap or in poor taste, but recipients often prefer meaningful gifts to expensive store-bought items. They know genuine thought and care went into making the gifts.

Gifts can be even more special when they incorporate photos. Photo albums make great gifts, especially since most people only use digital cameras these days. A mom who wants to make wonderful gifts that involve pictures should consider making photo albums. There are many websites that do photo prints for small fees. This is good because you don’t have to take pictures on real film to create physical pictures. Even the oldest photos or those taken from social media websites can be uploaded and then printed. These images can be pasted into traditional photo albums or hand-decorated notebooks.

Giveaways like this work best when there is some kind of theme involved and it doesn’t have to be grand or complicated, it just needs to provide a bit of direction. These themes work especially well for sisters, cousins, and other female relatives who are likely to be sentimental.

Male relatives will prefer fun gifts like photo mugs. The more out of context the image is, the funnier the mug will be. Acquiring the photo could be tricky. One idea is to ask the boy’s mom or wife for a picture of him when he was a baby. It will be tempting to choose the most embarrassing image in an effort to be funny, but it could be risky as some people don’t take that kind of joke well. In this case, it’s safer to choose an image that represents the man looking his best, even if it’s not as funny as the embarrassing images.

Photo mugs can be ordered online. Once the image is chosen, it can be uploaded to a website and printed on a regular coffee mug. These companies typically make mugs within a week of ordering. Enterprising artisans can be even more thrifty if they hand-paste the photo on a mug.