Frugal Teacher and Neighbor Gifts!

This is my favorite time of the year! I enjoy playing Santa and passing out many gifts to friends and family. As we all know, the economy these days doesn't allow us to spend money the way we once did. Everyone is cutting back here and there as they can. Well, this time of year that can be a little tricky. It's so easy to run into Walmart and grab a small gift or a gift card. However, if you have more than one child and need multiple gifts for teachers, etc this can get rather pricey. This year I decided to go cheap. I wasn't sure how, but I was going to do it. I also wanted to make sure that I was able to go cheap, but not appear to be cheap.

Every year for as long as I can remember my family gathers one day in December and makes Christmas candy all day. It's a tradition that we all love and enjoy. At the end of the day you come out with all this candy and the cost isn't really that bad. You can make several boxes on only $20. I have given candy as gifts for years. We give it to teachers, the mailman, our neighbors, my husband's co-workers and so on. So once again this year the candy has been made and that will be given as a gift. Now I know I could just give everyone a bag of candy and they'd probably be happy, but I like to do a little bit more than just that. This year I was coming up short on ideas though.

While I was at home visiting with my mother she gave me some things to make the cookies and muffins in a jar. I love this idea. It's cheap, it's cute and everyone will use it. And if they won't then they can pass it on to someone who will. We all have parties this time of year so it's nice to have that jar of cookie mix to take out and make a quick batch of something. It's even cute to just let sit around for awhile. You can pick up a box of jars for less than $8 and the ingredients are all pretty cheap. I know this time of year I have a ton of flour, sugar, and baking chips on hand anyway. The last thing you need is some fabric for the top of the jar, which you can also pick up cheap at Walmart and some ribbon to tie around it.

I am using both of these ideas for the teachers this year along with one more that I was able to come up with. Do you have any idea how easy it is to make your own sugar scrub? I never realized how easy it was until I did a little searching. All you do is mix equal parts of oil and sugar together. You mix them together and add some oil to give it a nice smell and you are done. How easy is that? I went and picked up some cute Better Homes and Garden half-pint jars with red and white lids at Walmart. I put the scrub in and tied a red ribbon on the jar. They look really cute. The best part is it took me all of about five minutes to do and cost me very little. No one will realize that I only spent five minutes making them. I was thrilled to have found this idea. I was hoping to find some baby food jars and I was going to use those, but didn't have any luck.

Now I plan to make a trip to the Dollar Store. I am going to purchase three cute baskets for $1 each and some wide ribbon. I'll rearrange the items in the baskets and tie on a large bow and it will look great! I think this will be our standard teacher gift from here on out. Enjoy!