Making Roots Festive Gift Guide 2025

Our festive gift guides are designed to give ethical, low waste or innovative gift inspiration for Christmas. We do this to help support you to buy better, buy less or buy more mindfully. Taking the stress out of the festive season and into enjoying the process.

This year we are basing our guide around love languages, and the idea that sometimes gifts aren't the physical kind. Good if you're on a budget, if you'd like to gift more mindfully, if you're gifting to someone who has it all or even someone who is tricky to buy for. We're going to run through gift ideas for each love language.

A really easy start and the overall best thing for purchasing- buy from small, local independant shops. If you start your shopping now, you've got plenty of time. If you're reading this at the last minute and you are tempted to shop online, read this post from last year with some mindful present ideas that you can buy locally (and quick).

Quality time, Gifts, Acts of Service, Words of affirmation, Physical touch

Quality time:

A craft evening (self organised or head to a pottery cafe) or A craft course

Dedicated no phone time

A weekend away together

A membership (Historic Scotland, National Trust, Kew, Cinema)

A puzzle (when completing a puzzle with others, it's sometimes easier to buy puzzles with larger pieces).

A new game (this year we've loved Mexican Train)

An Escape Room Ticket

Quality time to themselves (ie can you facilitate child care, or an evening or morning away from responsibilities that they can do anything they want?)

Self care gift sets/ their favourite skin care (this is of course also a gift but means time on themselves beyond the festivities)

Tickets for the theatre, a gig or the cinema

A foraging day

A make it gift (second hand lego, a model build)

Gifts:

Hand painted candles you could buy or make

Recycled earrings (Inspiration here)

Compost bin for the garden

Hot composter for a larger gift

Stationary (Diary, planners, organisers)

Book/s

A large reusable tote bag

Reusable Christmas decorations (perhaps better suited to earlier gifting)

A plant or tree

Seeds and or bulbs

Blanket

Photo related gift (photo album, photo book or framed)

Art

Handmade art (pet footprints, baby footprints, the world is your creative oyster)

Craft kit (paint by numbers, a starter macrame)

A keep for life cast iron pan

Food gifts

• Luxury teas

• Luxury coffee

• Luxury hot chocolate

• Homemade biscuits

A contribution to their hobby (camping gear they need, new yoga wear)

Fabric purse

Wildlife gift (I buy things regularly from NHBS and they have a great gift guide here)

Acts of service

A haircut voucher

Buy a secondhand piece of furniture that they need and upcycle it

Help them with something offer a days work to sort out their garden? Paint their hall?

Voucher set for each other you could buy a set or make one

Words of affirmation

Write a letter This is especially good for those that already have everything.

Physical touch

Either give or gift a massage

Use your imagination with this one, and tailor to whomever you're gifting to....

Wrapping tips:

Reuse wrapping paper

Make your own

Use fabric