Gift-giving can be difficult, especially during the holidays. Finding the right gift at the right price is hard enough, but then layer on crowded parking lots, long shopping lines, and inclement weather, and you have yourself a recipe for holiday stress! We just don’t need that added pressure in our already hectic lives.

With this in mind, I curated a simple list of budget-friendly gift ideas that you can have delivered right to your doorstep. You’ll find the perfect gifts for the health enthusiast, foodie, tea lover, or fragrance connoisseur in your life. (Or for yourself; you also deserve it!)

Homemade perfumes are wonderful for a myriad of reasons. From the ability to try new things without an enormous price tag to the pleasure of crafting something both beautiful and useful, perfume making is a pastime that I’ve grown to truly love. I custom tailor fragrances to match my mood or emotional needs or to harness the energetics of certain plants. But I also have a fondness for crafting blends that match the seasons.

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Each year as I make my holiday gift list, I have a certain set of criteria that I aim for. Offerings that are thoughtful, personal, and useful are my top priorities. I have generally found that homemade gifts are more appreciated than things that I can find in mass at any big box store. Small-batch DIY gifts also allow for customization and are great for keeping waste out of landfills.

I want to share some of my favorite recipe ideas that hail from a variety of different masterminds on the Mountain Rose Herbs team. I recommend using these as a baseline and tailoring them for the person you are gifting.

As we prepare to have guests over through the holiday months, it’s important that our friends and family feel comfortable when nature calls. After all, the key to life is not letting anyone know that you, in fact, have bowel movements. All kidding aside, it’s a sensitive subject for many, so giving your guest options that don’t involve heavy synthetic fragrances or noisy and environmentally harmful aerosol cans is both considerate and helpful.

When you think of autumn, what comes to mind? Is it the colorful masterpiece of the treescape, or the sound of crunching leaves? Possibly the taste of a pumpkin spice latte or warm mulled cider? For me, it’s the aromas whirling through the air that herald the coming of fall.

Over my years of DIY tinkering I’ve created over a hundred body care, culinary, and green cleaning recipes. Some I love seasonally, others come and go for one reason or another, and some shining stars remain a constant in my everyday life. One member of this VIP list is a “Four Thieves®” multi-surface spray. It’s easy to make, and its versality means that it earns its keep in my natural cleaning supply closet. It also smells fresh and invigorating and cuts grease with the likes of commercially available soaps and sprays.

If you’re like me, you aim to not waste any of your herbal ingredients—you understand that hard-working pollinators and farmers put a lot of love and care into getting the finest organic botanicals into your cupboard. This is why I began exploring ways to reuse my herbs after making herbal preparations. Through years of making tea, infused oils, tinctures, vinegars, and honeys, I’ve tinkered up some fun ways to upcycle the remaining plant material, often called the “marc,” into other fine uses and crafts.

Giving children a good herbal foundation will stay with them for their lifetime. Knowledge is power, and when we are young, we are especially open and eager to learn new things about the natural world. In the same way that learning another language is especially helpful in earlier development stages, so is sharing the language of plants. No matter what career and lifestyle children grow into, exploring plants as a child will give them a solid foundation of wisdom that will help them in their day-to-day lives. They will have the ability to take control of their own health and teach others to do the same. 

I’m always looking for new and convenient ways to add herbs to my diet. As you may have learned from my blog on how to make herbal salt blends, I believe it is the small daily habits that truly add up to the biggest changes in our overall health and wellness. This is one of the reasons I started making herbal ice cubes. This simple preparation is easy, fast, and offers some wonderful benefits for our hard-working bodies and minds. Simply adding a few herbal ice cubes to my water allows me to harness the power of herbs without tacking on any extra time or effort. These “instant iced tea cubes” turn a plain glass of water into flavorful tea in seconds and offer the opportunity to incrementally add extra vitamins, minerals, and functional herbs to your daily routine. 

When you are planning an event, especially one as large as a wedding, there are many things to consider: budget, theme, comfort and, hopefully, sustainability. When it comes to party favors, I’m a big fan of gifting homemade things that are clean, green, and most importantly, useful!