Homemade Christmas Table Favors

If you enjoy arts, crafts and food, half of the fun of planning for a Christmas dinner is experimenting with creative ways to present table favors to your guests. Christmas has a history of rich traditions and decorative styles from which you can pull your inspiration for some conversation-starting holiday favors. Does this Spark an idea?

Sweet Seating

Set up arranged seats for your Christmas dinner guests using favor place cards. Attach candy canes to simple tented card stock place cards or use other Christmas-themed candies such as ribbon candy, red and green candy-coated chocolates or pinwheel mints. Make your own edible place cards by writing each person's name on a gingerbread man cookie and setting them on the napkins at each place setting. As an alternative for less formal seating arrangements, fill tiny organza favor bags with red and green candies to set at each place setting, instead of using place cards.

Handmade Tree Ornaments

Handcraft personalized Christmas tree ornaments for your dinner guests to take home with them. Use felt to make simple cutout Christmas images and decorate them with fabric glue or make more complicated ornaments with materials such as polymer clay, beads, wood or polystyrene foam. Simply attach an ornament hook to each creation and place it in a decorative gift box. Set them in the center of the table or at each place setting.

Small Treasures

Offer up small gifts to each guest as useful and thoughtful table favors. Keep the theme of the holiday or choose your gifts to fit each guest's preferences. Make your own homemade soaps and candles with kits from any craft store and gift wrap them with wrapping that fits the table decor color scheme. If soaps and candles seem too difficult or time consuming, consider making hand beaded jewelry or personalized key chains with beading supplies.

Hot Drink Favors

Turn an old favorite after-dinner hot drink into a decorative part of your table's decor, with mugs as gifts for your guests to take home. Choose winter or Christmas related coffee mugs and pour enough cocoa mix into each to make a full mug of cocoa. Pour some miniature marshmallows into the mugs as well and insert a candy cane for a dash of holiday spirit. If your guests are coffee drinkers, leave out filling the mug with anything but insert a chocolate dipped plastic spoon as a stir-in treat for a fresh pot of coffee after the meal is finished.