The Gift Suggestion Thread

[Deleted]

Homemade wrapping paper is the best. Especially if you have little kids who want to wrap grandparent's gifts.

I love to give books to people, even if they aren't readers I will dig to find a book on a topic they like, Amazon is truly my best friend at this time of year.

[anne]

Homemade gift wrap reminded me of one of the best money savings holiday tips I use! Instead of speding all sorts of money on gift wrap, I use brown paper. I buy a roll of brown mailing wrap at Office Max for about half the price of a roll of gift wrap, and it's got about triple the amount of paper. I wrap all my gifts in brown paper, tied with pretty ribbon for a bow. I usually buy the ribbon half off after Christmas, and hold on to it until the next Christmas. I've also started using handmade gift tags. It's prettier than normal gift wrap, much cheaper, and when my family opens my gifts, I know it because they look different from the others.

But I realize that's probably for the penny pinchers thread. So to put this back on topic I'll say I buy my grandmother stationary almost every year. That's probably the only generation left that mails more than they e-mail, which makes stationary very hard for her to find. She counts on me to hunt it down each year. (I just don't tell her how easy it is to find on the internet. )

[sleepy]

Speaking of cheap wrapping paper, I love how gifts looked wrapped in newspaper. That's what we always did growing up. I will also cut up brown paper grocery bags, tie some brown twine around the package "artistically," and weave in a sprig of something green from my yard. I think it looks nice.

[dwanollah]

sleepy said:

Speaking of cheap wrapping paper, I love how gifts looked wrapped in newspaper. That's what we always did growing up. I will also cut up brown paper grocery bags, tie some brown twine around the package "artistically," and weave in a sprig of something green from my yard. I think it looks nice.

I do that, too... I'll get foreign language papers, or newspapers with lots of personal ads, or papers with really colorful adverts for weird stuff. Or I'll save magazine pages with obnoxious articles or things I can caption.

Brown-paper wrapping looks so pretty, and you can use ink-stamps or a little cluster of pine and mini-pine cones to honk it up.

[heyalice]

I become EXTREMELY popular with friends and family during the holidays because I sell books for a living.
I love making baked goods for gifts. Last year I made truffles for the first time(didn't realize how easy they were to make) and am glad to report that they were much appreciated.

[anne]

The candy/truffle making talent is a good one to have heyalice! I have a good friend who literally shuts down her kitchen for 3 or 4 days each Christmas for nothing but candy making. I look forward to her gift each year. The BEST years are the ones where I'm invited over to her house, handed a box, and told to fill it up.

[dwanollah]

Oooh, The Husband-Type Man does that, too! He makes fake Twixes and shortbread and custom-flavored peppermint patties (gads, that sounds dirty and pervy!) and all sorts of goodies. I like the "fill a box" (which also sounds dirty and pervy!) idea... we may have to incorporate that into one of our holiday bashes!

[anne]

My best find from this friend ever was chocolate covered ritz bits. The woman will dip ANYTHING in chocolate. I have a long standing love affair with chocolate covered oreos. But chocolate covered ritz (the peanutbutter ones) were a pleasant little discovery.

[Deleted]

Thanks, anne! I've recently started buying essential oils and that is a good use for them.

I've always liked gifts wrapped in the Sunday comics.

[Beeelicious]

Got one for ya - what the heck do I get my son's daycare lady?? It's an at-home daycare (in her home) and she has about 4 other kids there. She is pretty comfortable financially and I don't really know her likes and dislikes that much other than she is a very involved church goer and mother of two older teens. I am thinking gift cert to a nice restaurant, but the thing I don't like about gift certs is that people know how much you spent on them, and I'd hate to spend $50 and all the other parents spend $100 or vice versa... Anyone?

ETA: Correction, she's my son's daycare lady, not mine. ;-)