I almost always try to be frugal with gifts for Christmas and take advantage of sales and/or coupons, because otherwise it can get really out of hand. Last year, I purchased all of our girls' gifts using Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks which really helped with keeping our budget low. This year, we purchased their Christmas gift back in May (I know, that seems crazy!). I knew what I wanted to get them already, so when we went to IKEA for my birthday I made sure to go ahead and purchase their play kitchen, plus a few accessories to go with it. This is their main gift this year. We plan to assemble the kitchen (otherwise they would be unwrapping two cardboard boxes with no pictures on them, which isn't very exciting haha). We will wrap their accessories, which include the pots and pans, kitchen utensils, and the baking set. Other than those things, our girls will have their stockings to open (but that's it).
We have always wanted to be intentional about keeping Christmas gifts low-key and simple for our children. We obviously still love to buy them something special and want them to be excited, but we also want the focus of Christmas to be on who Jesus is, not on how many gifts we can get. We give gifts because Jesus gave us the most amazing gift of life with Him. So, the girls will be getting their kitchen stuff and stockings. Thankfully I paid cash for the kitchen way back in May with some of my birthday money, so that expense is done. All we have left are their stockings...
I am really determined to not spend a whole lot of money on their stockings, but I still want them to be full of fun things. So far I've been focusing most of my energy on Ellie's stocking (mostly because she's easy to find things for at this age). Here are some of my ideas so far:
Repurposing broken crayons: We have been accumulating a huge collection of broken and yucky looking crayons for a while now. I saw this tutorial for melting broken crayon pieces in ice cube molds to make new, colorful crayons in fun shapes and decided to give it a try. I purchased these rubber ice cube trays from IKEA for 99 cents each and it worked perfectly! I've had some issues with popping the fish crayons out of the mold, so I'm going to freeze it next time and hope that helps, but otherwise the other crayons came out great. I plan to get Ellie a new coloring book (probably from the Dollar Tree) and include these fun crayons with it as part of her stocking since this girl LOVES to color right now.
DIY Necklace Kit: Ellie has really gotten into stringing pasta on pipe cleaners lately and making her own bracelets, so I thought it might be fun to make her a necklace kit with precut strings and a variety of beads. I already have some yarn and beads from other projects I've done in the past, so I'm going to try to use what I already have and maybe pick up a few more things from the Dollar Tree. I also want to get a small plastic box for her to keep all of these things in.
Personalized Canvas Tote Bag: This was completely unplanned, but a couple of weeks ago at our local mommy group we painted canvas tote bags for our kids. I didn't even think of using this as a stocking stuffer until I almost gave it to Ellie, so I decided to hide it away for Christmas instead. This cost me $2 total and was very simple to do.
Books: My children are book lovers (just like their parents!) and we really go through the books in this house. My sweet girls are also a little too rough with books sometimes, so I try not to spend a whole lot of money on something that might end up being duck taped later (which literally just happened over the weekend...my Poppaw lovingly taped up some of my girls' favorite books that were falling apart). We happened to be in Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and I scoped out the clearance section for anything my girls might like. I found two board books that were originally $5.98 each but marked 75% off, so I ended up paying $1.49 for each book. These are just simple board books that aren't anything extraordinary, but we happen to have another book that's part of the same series and the girls really love it so I figured they would enjoy two new ones with the same format. These are too big to fit inside the stockings so they will just be wrapped and put under the tree.
Swap Group or Thrift Store: I'm part of a mommy group that meets twice a month to just get together, pray for each other, and have some encouragement over the normal joys and frustrations of being moms. Our meeting this week was the big swap, which just means that people bring things they want to get rid of (clothes, toys, household items, books, etc.) and we lay everything out on tables and everyone can just shop and take home what they want for free. I almost didn't go to this week's meeting because I was tired and didn't feel like getting dressed (I know, sounds pitiful but I have been tired all of the time lately). The meeting starts at 9:30 and I didn't roll out of bed until 8:30...and then I still had to get dressed, feed the kids, and get them dressed and out the door by 9:15. But I kept thinking that the girls needed to get out and play with friends for a little bit and it would do me some good to get out of the house so we went and (gasp!) we were on time! Anyway, I wasn't planning on looking for things to take home but then noticed the toys....and thought what a great opportunity to save money on stocking stuffers! So I loaded my arms with random trinkets and toys to put in the girls' stockings. I mean, it's free and I usually just buy junky fun things from the Dollar Tree anyway, so why not? I found some toy cars, dog figurines, a fishing pole, purse in the shape of a dog, and all sorts of randomness. I know not everyone is part of a mommy group that does a swap meeting like this, but I'm sure you could find similar cheap and fun things at Goodwill or wherever (or even swap trinket toys with another mommy friend!).
I also came away from the swap with this....
I know. It's ridiculous. But I saw it and couldn't resist taking it. The tail is falling off and the stuffing is coming out, but I figured I could sew it up a little and the girls would have a good laugh over it. I'm thinking of putting this under the tree as another gift.
Everyone has a different opinion on used items. I have always been a bit hesitant about buying used items and it's really just a personal/psychological thing. Normally, I would feel a little weird about filling my kids' stockings with used toys, but now that we're trying really hard to save as much money as possible to put toward student loans it doesn't bother me. We're not poor or drowning financially....we're just being smart! And looking at it that way makes me feel like I'm doing a good thing. My kids don't care one bit where these things come from or if they're brand new or used. Why not take advantage of that now, while they're young and carefree, than to try to introduce it when they are older and more aware of some of the stereotypes of buying used?
Billy and I have already decided that we are just doing stockings for each other this year. We have had a great year and were blessed with Billy being given the opportunity for a special project in Florida, so he made a lot of money working overtime. If we had been a bit smarter we would have used that extra money to pay off loans, but we weren't really committed to that endeavor at the time. We bought a new TV to replace our other one which had been having some problems and upgraded to iPhones (which we love and definitely don't regret buying). Since we've already made some pretty big fun purchases this year, there's really nothing we need. We're just looking forward to having a simpler Christmas and spending our time doing fun things as a family instead of Christmas shopping!
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