Toddlers: 24 Months+
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A little bit of a vent
Having a baby right before Christmas is stressful!
I love buying gifts for people. I love giving gifts. I love everything about Christmas. This year's going to be really tight since Max is coming just before Christmas. I found out yesterday I only get to take 3 weeks vacation instead of 4. Now we're even tighter on money than before. Figuring out Christmas gifts on this tight of a budget is getting really hard and stressful. We've told our families that it's going to be light, and they understand. I know everything will be fine and that we'll all be enjoying Max being here, so I just need to relax.
Any ideas for cheap or homemade gifts?
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Re: A little bit of a vent
We instituted a pollyanna (secret santa) for adults last year for Christmas. Only kids under a certain age get presents from everyone.
If you like to bake, you could bake a big batch of stuff and divide among little tins, foil wrap, etc. They usually have cute tins at the dollar store around the holidays.
I did most of our shopping on Amazon last year so I started doing Swagbucks in March to get Amazon credit, I've redeemed almost $100 in Amazon credit and a $10 Sbux card. I've also being taking the time to enter Huggies/Pampers points to see what I can get there. I've gotten Applebee's and Red Robin GCs, and at Huggies I won a Gap GC, I'm trying to hold onto those things.
I've been watching the daily deal sites seeing what's out that we should get, so far nothing major this year. I have a few deal bloggers on my FB feed and as I recall last year there were several good deals, like the Leap Frog alphabet pal was something super cheap, like $0.99!
From the homemade standpoint, I tried to make hand/foot print ornaments for the grandparents last year. But I ended up using my Pampers points for a Shutterfly calendar, I made 4 with that and a sale got them at a good deal. I've already had a request for another this year.
We do a secret santa thing with all the adults on my side. Kids get gifts from everyone though. We set a price limit and draw names in September (we just did our drawing last Sunday) and then do a group e-mail of our wish lists. It works really well for us!
DH's family wont do this so we do different things, one year we only bought for kids (end of summer clearance toys!), one year we bought big group sets of candles and divided them up for each 'family', this year we are going to do home made fudge.
We are doing secret santa on everyside of the family...thanks goodness b/c the cost was getting nuts and it's hard to know whether to get a gift for someone's boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.
Suggest it and see the response!
H doesn't have any family close. His mom & dad live in different states. I'm think of doing photo gift of DS for each of them.
As for my family we each write out a list of wants/wishes with a set limit of $20 and draw names at Thanksgiving. My neices & nephew are in HS & College and are apart of this drawing. Everyone just buys something for DS if they want. So this only puts us in hock for about $40 outside of each other & DS.