Money Saving Christmas Gift Ideas

During the holidays is probably where your money gets the tightest. All the gift shopping, food, decoration, and traveling expenses. The area where you probably spend the most money around the holidays is for Christmas gifts. With these wonderful easy and unique Christmas gift ideas, you'll save money and time searching for the right Christmas gift!

1. Movie Tickets. These are probably one of the cheapest gifts to purchase someone, if you think about it. A movie ticket costs around $7-9 a person. That's not too much to spend; when usually it's pretty hard to find something nice for each person that costs less than $10. Everyone loves going to the movies- this is what makes it such an ideal gift for anyone on your Christmas list this year.

2. Photo Albums, or photo collages. Photos are an ideal gift for just about anyone- What makes photos so special is the memories that we are reminded of when viewing the photos. Whether it's a place to store your many memories, or a photo collage made up of many memories, a photo album or collage always makes a great gift for anyone. These also aren't too expensive, either. You can usually find a nice looking one for about $5-8.

3. Decorative Glass Jar Filled With Candy. Junk food is one of the best parts of Christmas. Pie, candy, cookies, brownies, etc. Everyone has their favorites. Find out some of your gift receiver's favorites, and purchase them a nice decorative jar to fill with these goodies. The decorative glass jar is appealing to the eye, and also a great gift for use afterwards, to store their own candy in.

4. Ornaments. Ornaments are always a great gift to give around the holidays. Personalized ornaments, homemade ornaments, or nice ones that you can find in any store around this time of year. They're not too expensive to make or purchase, and aren't hard to find either. Even better yet, Christmas Photo ornaments always make a great personalized gift. Whether you make them yourself or purchase them- there's always a special photo to put inside them. If you need ideas & instructions for these, please see Here..

5. Homemade baked cookies. This is one of my favorite gifts to give or receive; it's also something that everyone absolutely loves getting every Christmas. This is a gift that never goes to waste, and isn't very costly to make either! All you need is a recipe, oven, mixing bowl, and cookie tins (You can find these anywhere, such as the dollar store). This is a fun to make gift and the kids can help you with the making of this as well!

6. Homemade Mixes in jars with cooking instructions.

If you don't have the time to cook the cookies, or think that they're going to go to waste, leave the cooking up to the receiver of the gift! This is easy and convenient for them, as whenever they want homemade baked cookies, but don't feel like going to gather a bunch of ingredients together, they can just take out your cookie mix! If you don't know of any good recipes that you would like to combine, I would suggest visiting Allrecipes.com or Cooks.com. These are my two favorite recipe websites, as many members submit tons of different recipes for you to try out, and there's ratings as well, so you can also get an idea of how good the recipe is before trying it. Don't forget to write down the instructions and maybe tie it to the top of the jar with a decorative ribbon?

By the way- I suggest purchasing a nice jar to put your mix in. Something appealing, such as a snowman jar, or something that you would see somewhere such as cracker barrel. The jar shouldn't cost you too much, probably around $2. To make a few (maybe 5) of these mixes probably cost less than $5! During the holidays, I see these mixes for sale at a whole lot of stores- And it's definitely a best seller. Making your own is much cheaper!

Homemade mixes are one of my absolute favorite. A few other ideas for homemade mixes include: Hot chocolate, brownies, and coffees!