Economical and Creative Holiday Ideas
Have a Fun Holiday Without Depleting Your Bank Balance.
Nov 16, 2008
From sending out cards to gift-giving there's a lot to think about during the holidays. These economical hints might take a little worry out of the process.
Inexpensive Holiday Cards
Holiday cards may be the only correspondence you have with some of your friends, so it would be a shame to dispense with the tradition altogether, but the costs of buying cards, envelopes, and stamps can add up. If you want to send out cards, use postcards. They don’t use envelopes, and in the US you save on the cost of stamps. To conserve paper and save stamp cost, send e-mail greeting cards. Make sure to personalize your e-cards with a photo and family news.
Simplify Gift Giving
Giving gifts is a fun part of the holiday experience, but it can be a hassle trying to find the perfect one for each person on a long list. Draw names with your siblings, office mates, or a group of close friends, allowing everyone to concentrate on one special gift per group. If you have a bevy of nieces and nephews, pool their names and spread the gifts out among all the aunts and uncles. Looking for presents is more enjoyable when you’re able to concentrate on just a few.
Five Handmade Gifts
You can save money and impress your friends and family by making their gifts yourself. Here are five ideas:
- Cookie of the Month Club - Give a lucky person a membership to your own Cookie-of-the-Month Club. Your recipient gets 12 batches of homemade cookies, one batch per month, throughout the whole year. Announce the gift with a ribbon-tied, handmade card listing all cookies and approximate delivery times. This also works with pies, breads – anything you can cook and deliver by hand or by mail.
- Photo Coasters – Cut an 8” by 12” piece of 1/8” plywood into six 4” by 4” squares. Clean and paint one side of each. Copy your chosen photos on regular copy paper (photo paper doesn’t work well with decoupage), and decide how you want to arrange them. Mix a little water into some white glue, and spread a layer of this mixture on the back of your pictures and the surface of the coaster. Place your art, and carefully smooth out wrinkles with your fingers or a popsicle stick. Let dry for a few minutes, and add another coat. Let completely dry. Keep coating with layers of glue or polyurethane, drying between each coat, until the surface is smooth.
- Personalized CD – If you’re a music lover, share that love by making a CD of some of your favorite music (or music you know your recipient will love). Personalize the CD case with your own art, complete with liner notes and song titles.
- Fleece Scarf –Buy fleece by the yard at your local fabric store, making sure to get at least 2 yards. Carefully cut an 8-10” wide by 60” (5 feet) long piece of fabric. Fleece doesn’t need to be hemmed, so simply cutting 1” strips on both ends (for fringe) completes your gift.
- Painted Mirror – Purchase a small mirror at a thrift or consignment store, making sure the frame is in good condition. Paint the frame with a neutralizing paint. After it dries, paint it with your chosen color. You can stop there, or use paint pens to decorate the frame with designs and quotations you feel fit your recipient’s personality.
The holiday season brings people together. With these hints, you can make that your focus, not if you’ll be able to pay your credit card bills come January.
