When you're trying to think of gifts for lots of people, it can get tough to come up with novel ideas for Christmas gifts. Homemade Christmas gift ideas can include crafty presents, but other great options are also cookies and other yummy foods in decorated jars and boxes.

Here are some of our top homemade gift ideas for kids this year. Adults can be even tougher, so check out all of our yummy Christmas cooking pages for some inspiration.

Craft stores have a great selection of wooden and cardboard boxes, drawers and chests to choose from.

You'll Need
1 chest/wooden box with lid
Paint
Glitter
White/PVA Glue
Assortment of trinkets and jewels
Laquer/clear gloss

Simply paint and decorate the chest to your liking. Once the paint has dried spread on some glue and sprinkle on glitter. You can even attach some jewels/ 3D stickers to the outside of your chest to decorate it even more.

Once it has dried you can give it a coat of clear gloss paint to seal it. Now you just need to place some specially chosen trinkets and jewels inside. This homemade Christmas gift idea can easily be undertaken by kids with just a little adult supervision.

Dress Up Box

This is something that my kids will be getting this year, as their dress-ups collection has outgrown its current case! This is a great Christmas gift idea for kids which will keep them entertained all year, but it takes a bit of organisation.

Find a large old case/chest with plenty of character. I always find great bargains in thrift or op-shops for just a few dollars. You can decorate your case with decoupage, material or an assortment of stickers. Previously I have left the outside of our case fairly plain, and just decorated the inside. Now for the hard part, gradually build up a collection of dress-ups to go in the case/chest. For more ideas on where to source dress-ups, check out our dress-ups page.

For my kids this year, they'll each get one new dress-up costume, plenty of old and recycled items, and a lovely chest to store them all in. Just imagine the fun on Christmas Day!

There are so many pre-packaged Christmas stockings that you can buy filled with chocolates and sweets. We like to give our kids some sweets at Christmas time, but I try to limit the amount of packaged sweet food that they consume.

I usually make Christmas cookies, gingerbread, rumballs and snowballs for other family members to go into baskets or decorated boxes. All I do is put aside a few of each, buy a couple of small sweets and candy canes from the store and make up a stocking treat for each child. They are just as excited to receive this as they would a pre-made stocking, and I know it's much healthier!!