Hey guys! We recently had the honor of sharing a little gifting guide with our friends @finandvince. You can find that post here, but I decided to share a little more detailed gifting guide here. I’ll share what we like to gift the girls, one another and loved ones.

We have 4 lovely little ladies under age 7. We want Christmas to be magical for them, but not be strictly about stuff. We practice the giving manger in our home and look at December as a beautiful month to remember how to serve one another well. I love spending December baking more, making more crafts together, and finding fun ways to love people. Along with this, when we do gift, we want to try and gift things that are both pretty and practical. My husband emphasizes things should have form and function. Our older girls are developing new, and rather strong opinions, as they grow and we want to respect their personal styles & interests as we gift. We really like the the idea of gifting a want, a need, something to read, and wear. Here are some gifts that meet this criteria,  have been a success in the past, and that will be gifted this year!

For the savvy…. Do not be afraid to thrift toys for gifts. Some of our most treasured toys have been thrifted and are being so well loved. That baby carriage was $3!!! Thrift stores are magical places where you can find so much unique goodness! Plus you can thrift throughout the year and gift it at Christmas. Almost every piece of the girl’s Christmas set we gifted them last year was thrifted and so beautiful! I think the most expensive thing I got was $.29 so you can really make magic happen when you thrift for the goods!

For the artist: Amazon has some seriously amazing art supplies. We have some favorite shops that also sell wool roving and beeswax crayons and molding sets. I’m going to come back and add some links to our favorite shops a little later:D We go through so many crayons and paint that Christmas is a great time to restock those supplies!

The girls love matching with one another! We’ve adopted a tradition that came from my husband’s childhood of gifting them new jammies every Christmas Eve. They get to open them and then wear them all day Christmas! We spend our Christmas Day serving and enjoying one another. We make everyone whatever they want for breakfast, enjoy this big ol’ feast and open presents and play and I just love it so much!

Pajamas kind of meet a need, a wear, and a want, so they’re a great gift! We have gifted them sets from @happyhannahs, @finandvince, @thesimplefolkco,  @chasingwindmillkids, @shoparq @jamiekay and this year we’re gifting them hot pink butterfly thermal sets from @garnethillpics and extra little thermals for the two littlest who want to live in pajamas lately. Fin& Vince thermals are so nice and cute enough that we can throw on a coat and boots and leave the house in them!

Because our girls are so close together in age, we like to invest in quality gifts that can be enjoyed and passed down to one another. I don’t want to collect a bunch of little plastic things that will break easily but want to invest in well-made, heirloom quality toys that will be enjoyed for years. Some of our favorite toys are wooden stackers, puzzles and blocks. @woodenstory @grimms and @thewoodenwagon are some of our favorite shops for these! Wooden toys hold up really well and, let’s be real.. they’re beautiful😊  Even when their room is destroyed, somehow wooden toys thrown all about are still lovely!

Books!! We love gifting books! Personalized books, i-spy books, and book series make for really fun gifts. Something I have learned in a family of book lovers is that books can be expensive! I enjoy thrifting books and using thriftbooks.com because you can find gently pre-loved books for incredible prices!

We also want to gift memories, so games that we can play together as a family are a great investment! We love gathering around a table and playing Uno, pass the pigs, go fish and lots and lots of memory games! My ideal evening is pizza, lots of pillows and blankets, cuddled around our ottoman, playing games together. The girls have learned to talk some pretty serious smack and it’s just one of my favorite ways to spend time together.

Something fun this year will be special slippers. The girls have been asking for slippers for quite some time but I couldn’t find any that I liked as much as they did. But! We recently found some really fun boiled wool slippersfrom @garnethillthat are cute little animals and such a fun addition to their matching jammies! This might sound lame, but we always gift the girls a fun new toothbrush. Honestly, they’re usually more excited about this than any of their other gifts ☺️

When gifting to our friends and family, Chris and I love making one-of-a-kind gifts in large batches so we can spread the love as much as we can. We’ve made salsas, breads, body scrubs, bath salts, lip balm, hair balm, boot balm, bears balm, body balm… basically all the balms😂 we love gifting items that we have handcrafted with love and it’s so fun collaborating with my husband for these little projects. I don’t have any pretty pictures of stuff we’ve gifted.. so you just have to trust me:D 

Chris and I have mixed feelings about gifting things to one another for the holidays. We both always tell each other we don’t want anything, then surprise each other with something sweet and sappy, and then each year say we’re really not doing anything for each other, and then decide we want the girls to see us gifting to one another, and so the cycle continues:D

This year, I’m gifting the girls and a few friends some extra little goodies that our friends @beekman1802 sent plus over two try. A few face care products for mom and some  fun body butters to share! The girls are very much into body care items and doing whatever I do lately.  I’m gifting them and some of my lady friends the fragrance free pure goat milk body butters. Things like these make such fun stocking stuffers and sweet little gifts.

Welp! I hope this was a helpful gifting guide and that everyone has a lovely holiday season full of peace, rest, and joy for you and your family! ❤️  Gifts are cool my friends… But people are so much better! Love your people well and have so much fun!!!!

(Disclosure: Some of the items featured in the post have been gifted and/or sponsored, but all opinions expressed are my own. )

Photography featured in this post from @amandapahls, @kaleyfromkansas and @megganharrisonphotography.