Christmas Gift Giving Ideas for a Frugal Holiday

The holiday season is approaching. For families with young children this is a great time to work on easy to complete crafts in christmas themes. This is not only inexpensive, crafts are fun for everyone and hand made gifts are always a hit with grand parents. You can start off by making cards and gift tags. In some craft and department stores you can purchase a card or gift tag kit. You can also achieve similar effects by acquiring construction paper, markers and scissors and glue. You can encourage creativity by allowing your children to draw pictures of snowmen, christmas trees or maybe angels. Another option is to trace a cookie cutter for the design.

A gift that is very inexpensive to make is a bubble bath. You will be doing most of the work but it is fun for the kids. You can use the soap of your choice. The most cost effective way to make a simple bubble bath is to purchase a simple white bar soap, about 5 bars. Also pick up several bars of a pleasantly scented soap. You will want to cut the bars of soap into smaller chunks of soap and grate it until you have flakes of soap. Store the bubble bath in a ziplock baggie until you are ready for your school aged children to distribute the bubble bath into jars, or decorative containers.

Another great and inexpensive gift your kids can make is a cocoa and tea gift mug. Purchase coffee mugs and an assortment of hot cocoa packets and flavored teas. Also get disposable spoons and chocolate squares. While the kids are dividing up the cocoas and teas among the mugs, melt the chocolate and dip the spoons into the melted chocolate. After the chocolate has hardened wrap the end of the spoon in plastic wrap and include one or two with each mug. Wrap the mugs in festive cellophane, sold per roll for gift baskets.You can also include freshly baked cookies or holiday candy with the mugs for an extra something sweet.