Gifts on a Budget

Each Christmas season it seems like there are a million things on my to do list. Some of the things that have caused me a lot of last minute stress are neighbor gifts and teacher gifts.  In years past, I've tried to make holiday candies, put them on plates, and take them around to my neighbors.   Last year, after looking at how much I had spent on supplies to make goodies, I realized that there had to be a more cost effective and less stressful way to approach neighborhood gift giving. 

 

Last July we had a "night at the movies" birthday party for my oldest son.  I bought these cute little popcorn containers at Target for party favors.  After making my initial purchase, I realized that I could use them as neighbor gifts too.  So I went back to Target and bought them out of their popcorn containers.  I then came up with the saying, and waited for the Christmas Season to roll around.  Last week I bought bags of Almond Joy candy bars, crinkle paper from the dollar store, and assembled the gifts. I quickly made up a tag on PicMonkey, mounted it on scrapbook paper, and had my family take the gifts around.  It was a lot nicer than stressing last minute and trying to make candies with three kids under four running around my house.

 

When my oldest started Preschool a few years ago, I started giving out Scentsy as teacher gifts. Since I, my mother, and two of my sister in laws sell Scentsy, I always have extra on hand! This year we gave out scent circles and fragrance foams. The boys were so excited (especially my four year old) to hand their gifts to their teachers.