Making the holidays easier on your wallet and on your brain with these gifting ideas

As the holidays get closer the stress of Christmas comes knocking on our doors. Now what happened to Christmas being a special celebration with the ones we care about the most? Well I’m here to tell you that it’s time to turn the stressful dread of the holidays back into what it’s all about. It’s time to make a gift that means so much while spending so little of those already tight funds.

This year overall is totally different. Shopping online seems to be the safest and new norm for most of us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are many who’d rather cram into a store during a PANDEMIC and pick out what’s left from the Black Friday explosion of people, but I have learned to appreciate online shopping and have even made a few tips to share with each of you. Let’s start with tip number one: It’s not about the price tag! Times are tough for a lot of people during this pandemic and the more we can save to maintain our everyday expenses counts! So this year let’s not worry to much about the name brands or the flashy price tags, but more about the meaning in the gift. I came up with the idea to make a specific gift for my siblings our mother, my grandmother and my aunt. This year people around the world have lost loved ones, best friends partners, a lot of people are grieving due to the loss of someone important. As for my family and I, we lost my daddy to Cancer in May. It has been devastating and hard on all of us. So I know that incorporating my father in this gift was a must. I have a family member who used to be the sketch artist for our police station years ago, she is still involved with artwork and so I decided to ask her for a favor, to draw a portrait of my dad. And she was more than willing because of the amount of time she had to work on it. Once the portrait was finished, I then photo copied one for each of my siblings, my aunt, my grandmother and my mom. I used the work printer and computer at my job to print copies as quickly as I could because some people don’t like to share, I ordered a pack of picture frames off of amazon for around $7.00 for a pack of 8 and used the extra rolls and ribbon from the previous year to wrap them up beautifully. I hand wrote a personalized note for each one of them in honor of my dad. This gift was not only sentimental but thoughtful and something they can cherish for a lifetime. And how much did it cost? A whoppin $1.00 per person.

Another tip to ease your worry filled mind during the holiday season, make tasty treat trays as a gift! You can never go wrong with homemade treats that we all love. Some of you may have many friends and neighbors, long distance cousins coming down for the holiday or even people far far away that you would normally ship gifts to. We sit here and count the people we can’t forget on our shopping list and suddenly 5 turns into 10 and 10 turns into 20, it’s all so much at such a hard time. Again, make a little bit of spending money stretch a long way. With the proper PPE, head to your local market and pick up some melting chocolate, a bag of apples, some rice crispy cereal and marshmallows, haystacks, and the baking essentials for homemade fudge and cookies. Now this may be a bit more expensive than the last gift idea, but that’s ok, it will go a long way for many of the people on your Christmas list. Make some fresh caramel apples, some delicious butterscotch haystacks, tasty fudge and green and red rice crispy treats! You can even throw in some homemade cookies and dress them up with yummy marshmallow icing or drizzle them with melted caramel. And the best part for me when gifted a tray like this... the popcorn ball! Seriously I don’t know why I never thought about treat trays as a gift it is so smart and so simple. No need to dig deep and figure out what each person plus their kids like. I promise you, this is a gift that the whole family will love and enjoy.

This year is all about crafting, baking and diy’s. Not only are you coming up with creative and thoughtful gifts, but you are saving money during a time when every penny counts. Invite your sister kings or children over with you and make it an all hands on deck project so everyone feels included and contributes to the hard (easy) work. Now here is another idea that is most likely already done in most of our homes! But this year have decided to make it work even during the stay at home orders. Trust me, I hate it just as much as you do but if staying hone and having less social interaction can someday make us mask free again, I will be a willing participant. And so why do we have to wallow? Let’s have som fun with it! This years Christmas gathering may not be anything like the others but this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. This year my family and I will be mailing our secret Santa’s to one another! We will then FaceTime, zoom or whatever video app we need to use to see one another open these secret and clever gifts. Each year we always make a dollar spent limit so that we can refrain from granny buying me the best gift because after all, I am the favorite. Haha sike, but the dollar limit is to make sure everyone has the same exciting feeling because there are those party poopers who tend to be a litttttle ungrateful sadly. Anyways, once we are all in our video chats we will take turns opening our gifts and whoever is opening theirs will then guess who their secret Santa is until there are no other gifts to open. Then.... the fun part. We will each sit with a pillow full of flower in front of us and the person in charge (usually grams) will read off who the correct person was, those who get it right will be added into the drawing for a gift card that we all purchased as a family! Those who get it wrong gets a pillow to the face full of flower. Now that’s a party! Now this doesn’t have to be the same game you choose, if you like it then play away! But if you wanna add your own spin or even a different game overall then just have fun with it! Make the very best of the situation given during this time of year.

Now let’s get sentimental. This one is for the couples. Regifting is where it’s at. For example, you may have something given to you from a family member who has passed, or maybe a piece of jewelry passed down from your mother or father, or maybe even a childhood stuffed animal or special blanket you've always had. The list could go on and on but that just makes a few. But you also want to make sure that your ready to part with this regifting item, make sure that the person receiving the gift is here to stay. Wait until your engaged or married or even dating for a few years before giving away a family heirloom. Last year my boyfriend had given me his childhood stuffed animal.it was a gorilla with one of his baby shorts from his baby days and I was absolutely in love with the thought he put into this. And I have since then slept with it every single night. In return, for this Christmas, I will be giving my now Fiancé my fathers ring that was passed down to me from our mother. I wouldn’t have it any other way. And it cost us nothing for these gifts but no amount of money could compare to the meaning behind gifts like these. Pair the gift with a hand written letter about why you’ve decided to give them something that means the world to you, remind them of the love you have and use some of the lamination paper to seal it up nice and neat. The letter will become another beautiful memory that can now last forever.

So everyone, don’t let gifting stress you out this year, just do what you can and always remember that it’s the thought that counts. Most everyone are in the same dilemma with being short on cash and not being able to go all out like the years before, so don’t feel alone. Trust me, I’m here with you. Pull out your crafty side, use little things around the house and just make it work with what you can do and what you do have. At the end of the day, all we really need this Christmas is our health and each other. Merry Christmas to all of you and I truly hope you have a great end of 2020.