Alternative Gift Giving Ideas

Creation Care Advocates put their heads together to fashion a list of alternate gift giving ideas.  If you missed the November class session or our booth at Mission Fest, the ideas are listed below.

• Memory book – family members contribute written memories of life events to a common family memory book
  
• Acts of Kindness – a compilation of 80 acts of kindness that family members committed to doing
• Donating/gifting animals through Heifer Project International http://www.heifer.org/gift-catalog/index.html
• Donating/gifting trees through Trees for Life International https://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa

• Handmade items such as a knitted scarf, wooden utensils, knitted dish cloths
• Gift items available from Soup of Success http://soupofsuccess.com/our-products/
• Membership in Seed to Feed, a program of Church Community Services that grows food locally for distribution to food pantries http://churchcommunityservices.org/services/seed-to-feed/
  
• Gift the tuition fee for the Master Gardening Program offered through the Purdue extension office http://www.hort.purdue.edu/mg/become.html
• Gift catalogs from:

Ten Thousand Villages http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) http://mcc.org/christmas-giving or https://donate.mcc.org/

Mennonite Mission Network (MMN) https://www.formstack.com/forms/MMNGiving-GiftCatalog

Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) http://www.meda.org/ways-to-give/gift-solutions-catalogue

• Home roasted nuts – you can do this on your grill.  This goes better with a cage to turn the nuts as they roast.
  
• Homemade peanut butter
• Prayer flags
  
• Luminaries made by tracing photographs on paper attached to a jar with a tea light inside
• Gift of kindness – money given to be used to help out someone else
• Baskets available at the Farmer’s Market
• Homemade tea box
• Homemade wooden Christmas tree ornaments
• Homemade bags for wrapping gifts
• Soap making
  
• Scarves made from old t-shirts
• Make homemade vanilla extract
• Make chai spiced honey from Kathy’s recipe
• Make pies or other food items to give as gifts
• Gifts of time such as folding laundry, cleaning, babysitting, leaf raking
• Gifts that kids can make:  homemade coffee mug, rag doll made from discarded t-shirts and socks, bug catcher
• Collect and give wild hazelnuts or black walnuts
• Dad’s Wild Jelly available at the Farmer’s Market (Note:  we sampled the “Serviceberry” flavor made from local June berries with Tim’s homemade peanut butter on Rachel’s bread–delicious!)
• Smucker’s maple syrup (made by George and Barbara Smucker)
• Small calendars made from a sheet of 8.5x11 paper cut in 12 sections and hand lettered
• Jellies made from Washington state blackberries
• Homemade applesauce