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Erin writes: “One thing that always gets people stressed during the various birthdays and holidays throughout the year is finding the perfect gifts for friends and family. I am a big believer in making gifts for people. I always find that people really appreciate a homemade gift. Here is my top 5 list of homemade gifts.”

• Handwritten letter, card, poem or story. This may seem really silly, but in this day and age, handwritten letters or cards are losing out to the ease of email, text messaging, and public networking sites. Why not sit down and take the time to actually compose a letter on paper? I tried to do this in college, and I found most people really liked getting a handwritten letter in the mail. You can either just write them a letter talking about how awesome they are, or you might even be feeling really creative and compose a quick poem or short story. Either way, it will give them something tangible to read and reread for as long as they have it.
• Knit a Scarf. I learned how to knit in about one day. The easiest thing to knit is a scarf, and once you learn how to do the basic stitch, you should be able to knit a scarf in a relatively short amount of time. To make this even easier, you can get large knitting needles and chunky yarn. A handmade scarf is just the thing for winter, and you can even make decorative scarves for people to wear even when the weather isn’t too chilly. This will make the knitting go even faster. There are many websites online that teach basic knitting stitches. A great place to get started is a website called learntoknit.com.
• Framed Picture or a Scrapbook. Most of your viewers probably have either a digital camera or a camera phone. Heck, maybe they even have a regular camera with film! Either way, a great gift is the gift of memories. You can take a picture of an event that is important to them (maybe you went to a baseball game together, or a party) and have it nicely framed. For the more crafty, you can even make a small scrapbook for the person. Let’s say that you and a group of your friends go to a Red Sox game (forgive me, I live in the North East). You can take pictures of the game and pictures of your friends and combine them with clipped out articles about the game or even baseball cards of players featured in the game. It may sound goofy, but it shows a lot of thought and it will give your friend something to remember the event by.
• Homemade Candy. Even though this sounds like a difficult gift, there are a few basic candies that anyone can pull off and look like a pro. One of the most impressive and yet easy is Chocolate Bark. All you have to do is melt a bag of good quality chocolate chips of your choice either over a double boiler on the stove top or in the microwave. Then when the chocolate is melted, you add about a ¼ to a ½ cup of nuts, dried fruit or broken cookies. My one standby that I always fall back on is a combo of semi-sweet chocolate, mini-marshmallows and broken graham crackers. You can try many different combinations. You will end up looking like a real expert and your friends will love having a bag of candy all to themselves.
• Dinner. Inviting friends over to dinner is one of the greatest gifts a person can give. Even the most inept cook has a few basic meals that they can whip up for themselves, so why not invite a few friends over and enjoy the food together? Whether it something super fancy or not, people will appreciate the time and effort you put into the meal. A good bonus tip if you plan on doing this is to go with something you have made before and know you can accomplish. Doing something new and complicated may be impressive, but the stress that this can cause is not worth it. Besides, your friends will appreciate homemade tacos just as much as they would appreciate Beef Wellington.
• Bonus Tip! If you decide to make candy or dinner for your friends, make sure you know about any type of food allergies or dietary needs.
  If your friend is allergic to nuts, you don’t want to make them peanut brittle and if they are vegetarian you don’t want to grill them a steak for dinner. I know it’s common sense, but it will save a lot of trouble in the long run.

• Pays 50% HolidayScrapbookDeal.com.
• Scrapbook Resource Directory.
• Make Your Own Onesies!
• Scrapbooking Made Easy.
• Computer Scrapbooking 101.

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