Christmas Craft Gift: Homemade Reindeer Washer

Are you looking for a simple, practical and very special Christmas present that the kids can help you make? Then this is the perfect gift idea that everyone on your holiday shopping list will find useful! It's cute, unique, comes from the heart and costs less than $5.

An important holiday tradition in our family is to show others just how much we love and appreciate them by making a special Christmas present. Each year it seems more difficult to find the perfect gift for everyone on our list, or the time needed to make everything.

Cookies and baked goods are wonderful, yet with family members with diabetes, heart disease, or holiday dieting, it is nearly impossible to find just one or two recipes that everyone can enjoy.

So, we came up with the idea, "We Wash You a Merry Christmas."

For each present you want to make, you will need the following supplies:

1 Kitchen towel

1 Mesh scourer

1 bottle of Joy dish detergent (12.6 or 16 fl oz.)*

1 Brown lunch bag

2 wiggly eyes

brown construction paper

Other supplies that may be helpful:

Needle, thread, hot glue gun, hole puncher, stapler, ribbon, markers and pens

Since everyone has dishes that need cleaning, and anyone can use a kitchen towel and dish detergent, the actual "present" of this gift is the kitchen towel, Joy dish detergent, and the mesh scourer.

The love is in the creativity and the fun you'll have making and sharing this as the brown lunch bag will be your homemade reindeer wrapping paper!

First, glue two wiggly eyes to the front of the lunch bag. If you don't have wiggly eyes you can use buttons, pom poms, or draw your own eyes however you like.

Second, sew or glue the mesh scourer under the eyes. This is the reindeer's nose. Red mesh scourers work the best if you want your present to be Rudolph, but blue and yellow scourers are just as cute.

Trace your children's hands on the brown construction paper and cut them out. These will be your reindeer antlers.

After the glue has dried, open the lunch bag. Place inside the bag a kitchen towel and a bottle of Joy dish detergent. If desired, add a Christmas card that you have printed out on the computer or had your children design.

Inside the card enclose the following message:

"We wash you a Merry Christmas in hopes that your New Year will just bubble over with Joy!"

Once you have placed the items in your lunch bag, glue or staple the handprint antlers to the top of the bag. If desired, with a hole puncher, punch a hole in the bag between the antlers and tie on a Christmas colored ribbon.

This makes a cute, inexpensive, and fantastic gift idea with lots of possibilities and creative ways to adapt it to suit your holiday needs.

For children who are big enough to actually wash the dishes themselves, have them write on the back of a handprint antler, "Good for 1 Free Christmas Wash." For parents who would prefer a car wash, children can write, "Good for 1 Free Christmas Sleigh Wash." For parents with pets, children can write, "Good for 1 Free Reindeer Dog Wash." Loading and unloading the dishwasher are other possibilities. Feel free to come up with your own.

You can even have children who know how to crochet make their own kitchen towels. The kitchen towels with the crochet tops are simple to make or even a square washcloth would be appropriate. You could also purchase the supplies needed to crochet your own mesh scourers at a craft store if you are very crafty.

This is truly a great gift idea that the recipient will be thrilled to receive as well as thrilled to actually be able to use throughout the holiday season.

*For the holidays, the 12.6 fl oz Citrus Burst Joy is red so it is probably the best choice. But if you can't find that at your local grocery or discount store, the larger 16 fl oz size still fits nicely inside the lunch bag. If you'd prefer to use another brand of dish detergent, like Dawn, that's fine. Change the wording on the card to say, "We wanted to wash you a Merry Christmas, but we couldn't think of a Dawn thing to get you."