Frugal Holiday Giifts and Tips

The holidays are a stressful time for most people, and one of the worst worries people have is how to afford gifts for everyone on their list while still being able to pay for day-to-day necessities. With the soaring prices of consumables as well as gasoline and home heating, this will be a major concern for a lot of people this year.

One of the best ways to give a thoughtful, inexpensive (in terms of money laid out by you) gift is to make it yourself. Homemade gifts are not all about food, although food certainly ranks high in the satisfaction ratings by the recipients. Since food is the favorite category, let's start there. When I first opened my business, I wanted to send a nice gift to my customers for the holiday season. Since my customers were of many faiths, I wanted to send something suitable for all faiths and after a bit of thinking and checking around, I found the perfect gift. I went to the local dollar store and purchased a large quantity of coffee mugs. The selection they carried was amazing and I was able to find a mug suitable for everyone on my list. I also picked up gift bags of varying sizes, so I would have one of the correct size for each office and a quantity of plastic trays and plates. I went to the grocery store and purchased several boxes of teas, individually wrapped envelopes of hot chocolate and small cans of Folgers ground gourmet coffee. I chose Folgers because it tastes as good as the specialty coffees at a much lower price. My last purchase was a few bags of individually wrapped miniature candy bars, peppermint sticks and Starburst candy chews. (As hard as it is to believe, some people don't like chocolate.)

Right before the holidays, I made enormous quantities of cookies and then I filled the plastic trays and plates with cookies, each appropriate to the number of people in the office. I filled each mug with several tea bags and two bags of hot chocolate and loaded them into the paper gift bags and dropped in some candy and a can of the Folgers coffee. The pretty bags, delivered with a tray of assorted homemade cookies, were a smash hit with my customers and cost me less than $5.00 per person. The following year, I can't begin to count how many people called to see if we were making a cookie delivery again. One man even put in a special request for Snickerdoodles, his personal favorite.

A nice substitution to scented candles for people who don't want open flames in their home is to make some room fresheners. To do this, take some water-absorbing polymer crystals (Available at garden centers, they're normally mixed with the soil to hold water and reduce the times you have to water your plants.) and put them in pretty glass containers. Activate them with concentrated liquid potpourri that you can buy in most dollar stores. Make sure to test the granules first. I can't tell you how much to use because different brands might take more liquid. Put a teaspoon or so in a container and add water slowly, tracking how much water they absorb. A pint container will probably use one tablespoon or so of the granules. As the crystals dry out, add more water and the scent will last up to a year. An alternative to the potpourri oil is plain water mixed with food color and essential oils. You can find essential oils at a crafts store. If the present is coming from your child, give them glass paint markers and let them decorate the containers. You can also use stickers or decoupage pictures cut from old wallpaper books on to the glass. If the container has straight sides, you can purchase transfer paper for your computer and make your photographs into slides that you moisten and slide onto the container. Canning jars work well for this project as well as any old jars you may have stored around the house. If the jars are particularly unattractive, you can cover them with some pretty fabric and lace. Make sure to put a watertight cover over the jar with instructions to remove it before setting it out.

If you have a friend or neighbor who is ill or has trouble doing even the simplest maintenance chores around their house, make a booklet of coupons, using desktop publishing software you can download free from the Internet or simply write them on holiday themed paper and cut them out, offering to rake leaves, clean the gutters, mow the grass etc. You could offer to make a meal once a month. Some people would appreciate a ride to the grocery store or maybe to the doctor. Just look and see what they need. If the gift is for a special friend, make sure to include a coupon for a free hug, good for unlimited uses. Put the coupons in a pretty envelope or box and present it with a plate of homemade cookies.

For your friends and family with that special dog, make a batch of homemade biscuits from a recipe you can easily find on the Internet and present them in a nice container decorated with appropriate dog themes, such as bones or balls. You can make the decorations yourself or download them from a free clipart site and have your child color them and glue them on the container. The big metal coffee cans work well for these and they look very nice when you spray paint them. You can do the same thing for the cats in your life. Just make sure the treats are very small. Most cats don't like big chunks of food that has to be broken down into smaller pieces before they can eat it.

Go to your favorite department store and buy some inexpensive tee shirts. Print out favorite photographs onto iron-on transfer paper and iron them on the shirt. If you have a photo workshop program, you can add borders and frames to the pictures and print them out together or you can take pretty pieces of lace you find at a fabric store bargain bin and slipstitch a frame around each picture.

Go to a crafts store and buy an unfinished bird feeder and decorate it yourself. Present it with some homemade bird treats. To make these, take clean pinecones and fill the spaces with peanut butter or honey and then roll in birdseed. You can make suet cakes by mixing equal parts of melted lard, quick cooking oats, whole-wheat flour or cornmeal, peanut butter, wild birdseed and a mixture of chopped fruit, unsalted nuts and raisins stirred together to equal one part of the ingredient list and put in the refrigerator to harden. If the mixture is too thin, add more dry ingredients. This can then be cut and put in a suet holder you can buy for $2.00 or less or you can make your own using directions you can find on the Internet.

For the gardener in your life, buy a pretty basket at the dollar store and fill it with gardening hand tools, a pair of gardening gloves…you can add embellishments to make them special…some inexpensive clay pots and some flower bulbs that they can 'force,' or cause to bloom early, in the flower pots you gave them for some winter color. Take a half-yard of sturdy fabric, cut it in half and, with right sides together, sew around three sides. Turn it right side out, lay in a piece of ½" foam, cut to fit and slipstitch the fourth side to make a pretty kneeling pad.

If you crochet or knit, a pretty hat and matching scarf and mittens makes a lovely gift.

If you love to scrapbook, give a coupon good for 'x' amount of photos to be made into a scrapbook after the holidays. Even better, have your recipient come to your house and work together to make the scrapbook. It gives you wonderful one-on-one time and is a great way to use up the last of the cookies.

If you have a big open house every year, consider simplifying it. Rent some Christmas movies, make a big bowl of old-fashioned popcorn (not microwave), indulge in some real butter for it and invite family and friends over for a movie night. Throw some pillows down on the floor for extra seating, serve coffee and soft drinks and the ever-present cookies and you'll have a party your family and friends will treasure for years to come…without spending a fortune. Another fun get-together is a game night. Drag out those old board games, a few decks of cards, push the furniture back to the walls, borrow some card tables and folding chairs and have fun. If you want to have poker night, use stick pretzels as chips. Any pretzels and popcorn left can go out to the bird feeder.

So think about your special talents and put them to work this year. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars to be happy. And even better, you won't have to face enormous credit card bills in January that you'll still be paying off in August.