1. Anything from your kitchen: Cookies, jams, fudge, quick breads, your famous spaghetti or barbecue sauce, your special trail mix, or a kit with the makings for something yummy, tied with a ribbon: your perfect pancakes or scrumptious seven bean soup.

2. Booklet of favorite memories: Have your child draw illustrations and rite or type up his or her favorite memories of/with the recipient and put it into a binder to make a book.

3: Personalized cookbook: Your recipes, your child’s comments and drawings, in a binder.

4. Personalized Mousepad: Let your child draw with markers on a white mousepad. Or use flexible adhesive with any fabric. Or choose a photo and use iron-on transfer paper. Instructions at: http://desktoppub.about.com/od/transfers/l/aa_mousepad.htm
Or just do it at a copy shop or cafepress.com.

5. Handmade bath salts
Mix Epsom salts with essential oils, fragrance, and food coloring in a decorative jar.

6. Candles
Add crayon chips to plain paraffin wax and dip wicks in to make hand-dipped. Or just decorate storebought candles.

7. Canvas bags with iron-on designs

8. Homemade calendars with photos of the kids

7. Painted picture frames

8. Tie-dyed teeshirts, sheets, etc.

9. Christmas ornaments with kids’ photos

10. Art: For grandparents, a framed picture drawn by a grandchild is the perfect present.

11. For friends and cousins: homemade clay, fingerpaints, bubbles, puppets, a kit of dress-up items, a kit of cool art supplies.

12. Certificates for your services: A massage, babysitting, dog walking, painting a room, flying a kite together.

About the Author:
Dr. Laura Markham is a clinical psychologist and the founding editor of the parenting web site www.YourParentingSolutions.com, featuring a popular advice column and parent-tested solutions you can use every day to connect with your kids and create a richer family life. Her work appears regularly on a dozen parenting sites and in print. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.