Christmas Gift-Giving on a Budget

It's Christmas time. Every shopping mall and convenience store is filling the air with carols. Wreaths hang on doors all over town, and many houses are festooned with lights. It's supposed to be a time of joy and peace, and not a time of worry. But when you're on a budget, and you have presents to buy, it's easy to get stressed, and forget to enjoy the season.

Luckily, it's not really hard to give great presents without spending a lot of money, once you start focusing on what people will enjoy, and give up the notion that the best gifts are the ones that cost the most.

For adults and co-workers, handmade gifts always mean a lot. Even if you're not crafty, you can give handmade presents with "gifts in a jar." From sand-art brownies to bath salts, they are easy to do and make a great presentation. For instance, bath salts only require some pretty containers, a big box of Epsom salts, some essential oils, and maybe some food coloring. To get you started, here's the URL to one such site: http://www.geocities.com/giftsinajar/. Just type "gifts in a jar" into Google or Yahoo and you will find thousands of recipes online.

Another idea for adults is to take advantage of the many printables online. You can find gorgeous stationery and recipe cards, notepads, and much more at multiple sites. All you need is a printer and some printer paper for the stationery and notepads, and some stiffer printer paper for the recipe cards.You can make matching sets of everything, or individual small gifts.
Again, just use Google or Yahoo or another search engine of your choice to find many printable gifts. This one is just a sample: http://www.shadow-graphics.com/printables.html.

You can find printable gifts for kids, too. The Internet is rife with paper dolls, toy patterns to print out and assemble, activity sheets and games, and coloring pages. Pick your favorites and make customized books. There are also many sites for personalized stories. Nothing thrills a child more than a story featuring him or her. For Christmas themed stories, try Santa's Stories at http://www.northpole.com/PersonalizedStories.