Gift giving for single friends.

If you have any family or friends who live by themselves, or if you yourself have ever lived alone, you're probably aware of the challenges that face a single guy or gal when it comes to eating at home. Shopping for smaller portions is difficult, (and often more costly because bulk-buying can be less appealing to someone who knows he'll have to eat the entire "family pack" of chicken drumsticks himself.) There are items like celery or lettuce that can go bad before being consumed. There are other considerations, as well, like a lack of scaled down recipes and even the general feeling of "I don't even like bothering with cooking when it's just for me."

This situation presents you with a wonderful gift you can present your friend either for a birthday or Christmas or any other event - even just as an "I appreciate you." surprise. (More in full post.)

What you will need: Freezer containers, enough for several meals, in sizes of individual portions. (Note: I do freeze many things in plastic bags, because they can lay flat in the freezer, but it is up to you whether you want to do this, or would rather use something studier as this is for a gift.)

Several weeks before you are giving the gift, pick one or two meals you are cooking for your own family and increase the portions enough to include one more serving. If you do this far enough in advance, to where you are only picking one meal a week, you can squeeze this into your regular food budget with very little adjustment.

Freeze the extra portions, making sure to label and date them. Do this each week until you have as many meals as you want to give. I personally like to give 7, as a "Week of Dinners Just for You". Also, if you bake your own breads, you can add a loaf, a dozen biscuits, dinner rolls or mix of different breads to the gift. Write or type up a page with a list of each meal and any heating instructions the recipient will need to know. (For instance, if I give a bowl of chili, I also grate some cheese and freeze this in a small bag, so my instructions will include the note that the cheese is to be thawed and sprinkled on the chili.)

I deliver this gift in a regular brown paper bag, which, sadly, nowadays I can only seem to find at Target. I will occasionally go to Target and cruise their "Dollar Spot" section and then, if I purchase anything, I always request a paper sack to carry it. They do have nice, sturdy bags, with handles, which is particularly helpful. I put the instructions in with a nice handmade card, and I always try to add a few pieces of fresh fruit, such as an apple or two, or a banana.

This is a great gift for young folks just out on their own, all the way to older retirees. Before my father - a widower, he'd lost my step-mother to cancer - passed away some years ago, I quite frequently brought him a bag of meals and it was not only something nice for him, but peace-of-mind for me, knowing he was eating a good, home-cooked meal and not running out to some local junk-food place again.

Everyone I have ever done this for has always expressed a great appreciation for it, especially the gentlemen. As my BIL once said, "This is even better than winning a free meal at a local restaurant. It's a whole week of food and no one's trying to sell me anything!" :)

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Free cross stitch patterns

DMC - the embroidery floss people, have a nice collection of FREE CROSS STITCH PATTERNS available on their website, including some "beginner" designs for new learners.

FREE PATTERNS ONLINE offers several designs, including seasonal ones, many of them simple enough for beginners.

CRAFT DESIGNS 4 YOU has instructions on learning cross stitch, plus some free patterns.

123 STITCH has patterns contributed by users, good for more experienced stitchers.

And THIS SITE has a collection of Christmas angels of intermediate to expert level of difficulty.

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Gifts for Kids.

If your kids are like my kids, it seems they get invited to at least one birthday party a month. Now, I remember going to birthday parties when I was young and gifts from friends were not typically big affairs. (I can remember one party where everyone was in awe of... a fuzzy pen. Which I think probably cost about $1.) Now we go to some parties where the other kids are bringing large gifts that cost $30 or more- gifts that when I was a child would've been considered the "big birthday wish gift" from mom and dad.

I suppose we could do the same, rush out and buy my son's friend the Pirates of the Caribbean Lego Ship for $40. But then we wouldn't be able to eat for a week, so that wouldn't exactly be a wise decision, eh? (More in full post.)

I actually treat kids gifts in much the same way I do for adults. I assemble gift baskets or bags of treats, a combination of purchased items and homemade things.

Here are some gifts we've given lately. (And no, sorry! I don't have pictures!)

For a young girl turning 9 whose mother told me, "She wants to learn to crochet like your daughter, but I don't know how myself so I can't teach her." - I bought a blue plastic, two-handled basket from Dollar Tree that she can use to tote her new supplies. ($1). I got out several bright colored yarn skeins I have purchased from various garage sales and made 6 round rolls of roughly the same size. (At most this was 30 cents.) From the Super Wal-Mart I purchased a crochet hook pack for about $3.50. Sorry, I'm being a bit lazy here. I could go grab my budget book and pull out the actual receipt, but I do remember the total with tax was just under that price. I then printed out THIS PAGE with a little handwritten note at the top encouraging her to practice and in her birthday card, which my daughter made, I included a "coupon" for 3 crocheting "private lessons" at my house to learn basic stitches and eventually use the yarn I gave her to make a scarf. We finished this gift basket off by my daughter adding a crocheted belt she made for her friend in her friend's favorite color. My daughter came home from the birthday party and said, "Mom, now all my friends want to know how to crochet." so I took that to mean the gift was well-received. :)

For the just-turning-five daughter of a homeschooling family, we made a "My Rainy Day Basket". The basket was a plain pink basket bought after Easter for 25 cents. In it we put several bags of homemade playdough (Sidebar: If you ever make homemade playdough and want really bright colors, generic kool-aid drink mix packs - usually cost 10 cents each - work really well, mixed in with the dough.); a package of plastic cookie cutters from Dollar Tree to play with the playdough; a flexible cutting board to play with the playdough on (Which - I don't know how much these really cost, but we found a pack of five of them for $1 at a local flea market and they work great as play mats or painting mats.); plus we added a "personalized" coloring book, which was created by me printing several free coloring pages off the internet, making a cover with her name printed on it in large letters, and I bound it by using a comb binder machine*, and a box of crayons purchased last summer during the big back-to-school sales. (25 cents) We finished this basket with a boxed puzzle, also purchased from Dollar Tree.

For a 11-year-old boy, we recently created a "Bag or Tricks" gift. He loves magic tricks and so using free internet sources, my son and I printed him a magic trick booklet and then got the supplies he needed. (These were just simple things like rope, a deck of cards, an empty bottle, some coins - none "tricked" out, like a two-headed coin or anything, just regular household items.) We put this all in a plain brown paper bag and stapled it shut and my son wrote "For Brian's Eyes Only - Top Secret!" on it. This was apparently the hit of the party, according to Brian's mom. She said it sat on the table with the other gifts and it was obvious the boys all REALLY wanted to know what was inside, and once he finally opened it, that's all the kids wanted to do - practice and learn the tricks - for the rest of the party.

As you can see, our gifts are very simple and old-fashioned. Generally, they cost around $5 to put together. Anytime my children get a birthday party invitation, if I don't know the child well enough already, I call up the mom and quiz her on her child's interests. Once I know that, I can start brainstorming ideas.

A few other hints:

Personalized gifts always seem to be winners. I once made a set of hair ribbons for a young girl out of solid colored grosgrain ribbon where I wrote her name on each end with a fabric pen. She loved them.

Get creative with the packaging. I guess you can see from all my gift posts, I rarely actually use wrapping paper. It seems like such a waste. It serves one purpose, then gets thrown away. THIS PATTERN shows you how to make a simple draw-string backpack that's a cute gift all in itself and can be used to hold other gifts.

Look online for instructions to make other gifts. Try googling something like "make your own toys" for more ideas. And you might even find some fun things to make for your own children.


*A long time ago I bought a comb binding machine at a church rummage sale and it has been a great thing to have on hand. I've used to to make coloring books for kids and "publish" books my children have written and illustrated as gifts to adult family members. I also use it to make a "best of" sort of portfolio of my kids' work samples each school year, just to keep for myself. I don't think I would ever say they are worth the $40 or more new, but you might want to consider purchasing one if you ever come across it used like I did. Or perhaps you might have 4 or 5 friends who'd be willing to all chip in and buy one and then share it. :)


ETA - Er... that was "wise decision" not "wish decision", though - Hee.

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Photos?

Well, I have to admit, I've only once ever taken a picture of a gift I made, and while I'm posting it here, I'm afraid this will be a little misleading! You see, this was a gift made for a woman in our support group and is not like my usual gifts, because this was coming from all of us and other women contributed to the over-all costs. In fact, that's *why* I took the picture - so the other moms could see the final product before we presented it.

I can tell you this - the candle was $1.00 from Dollar Tree, as was the ceramic trinket box (The round thing by the basket handle.) The chocolates cost $1.00 total. I don't know about the basket or bath soap; someone gave them to me. The green material was - er, maybe .15 cents? I cut it from a fabric I bought at 50 cents a yard. The cloth that I embroidered I got in a large bundle of embroidery fabrics from Goodwill. I would say about .25 cents for that, rough estimate, based on how much I paid for the entire bundle.

In any case, as per requested by Iris, here is one picture anyway. I will have to start taking more pictures! It simply never occurred to me before!

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Learn to Crochet & Knit.

Lion Brand Yarn has free instructions to learn to crochet and knit and includes some patterns for beginners.

CROCHETING
KNITTING

I shop for yarn at garage sales and when I find it, I bargain for 10 cents per skein. The seller almost always takes the deal. I do also sometimes find yarn in discount stores and dollar stores, but I only buy it there if it's the really nice "fuzzy" yarn and I use it for special projects and borders.

One thing I like to do is make baby blankets. When I give them to expectant mothers, I include a little card with this message:

Precious baby, though we haven't yet met, I made this gift just for you. My thoughts and prayers were carefully woven in to each chain and stitch and turn. And so each time this blanket is wrapped about you, know that it is more than simple warmth and comfort you are receiving. It is a loving hug from me.

That isn't from anything - I wrote it myself and you're welcome to use it, or any version you come up with. It grew out of what I told my own children about the blankets I made them when I was pregnant. I've always told them any time they needed, if I wasn't available for some reason, they could wrap up in their blankets and know this was a hug from me.

If you take the time to learn to knit or crochet, if you don't already know how, you will be able to create many lovely gifts. Free patterns abound on the 'net. I like to listen to audio books while I work, and often the kids and I will sit in the den and listen together. My daughter and I will work on some type of project and my son likes to just lie on the floor and listen. Just to note - crocheting (which I do enjoy more, sadly for me) does use more yarn than knitting. It also typically produces a "heavier" result.

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Necessity is the mother...

What would you say if I told you one year I gave everyone toilet tissue rolls for Christmas? Seriously. I did.

All right, so I didn't just walk up and hand them cardboard tubes, but they were used in the gifts I made. It was the year I learned to prepare for Christmas all year long. I hadn't previously done that. But as I said in my About Me page - I've had to learn all this stuff as I go along, and I'm still learning new things every day.

This particular year, I didn't get started on Christmas gifts until late November, something I'd always thought meant I was "ahead" because I wasn't waiting until December! Eep. Unfortunately, this had been a particularly hard year for us. Our second child was only a few months old, and a new baby obviously adds new expenses, and my husband had been out of work for almost three months. By October, he was working again, but our finances were even tighter than usual.

(More in full post.)

My gift-giving brainstorming started off with twenty dark brown paper gift bags and a bag full of toilet tissue rolls that I had been keeping because I would cover them with paper and let my then preschooler play with them like blocks. The bags were un-used, but they had advertising on one side that I needed to cover up. I decided to make pictures out of construction paper, a supply I always have on hand because I use it with my own kids and with the kids in my Sunday School classes. I did not draw anything at all. I cut everything out, piece by piece, in the color I needed and then glued them to the bags. After a little thought, I decided to use Christmas carols as a theme. So, for instance, one bag was covered with a cut-out Christmas tree and cut-out ornaments (O! Christmas Tree!) and another had Jesus in the manger. I made one bag for each adult I was giving a gift to - at the time 15 people total. As I worked on the bags, real inspiration struck. I'd already decided to invite everyone to a dinner at my house as part of their gifts. Instead of making tags for the gift bags, I wrote down the names of each carol I had used on small strips of paper. I put each strip in a toilet tissue roll and added 3 Hershey kisses from a bag I'd bought to make my husband's favorite chocolate pie on Thanksgiving. I covered the tubes with tissue paper and tied them on the ends so that they looked very much like ENGLISH PARTY CRACKERS - of course mine wouldn't actually "pop" when you opened them. For each tube I made, I took a plain white mailing label, drew little Christmas ivy and berry designs on it, wrote the recipient's name and stuck it to the tube.

For actual gifts, I made all the men spicy hot pecans and the ladies got sugar almonds. Because this was the year my daughter was born, I had lots of recent pictures of my friends and family with my kids. I picked one good picture of each person and framed them with inexpensive frames designed to be used as Christmas tree ornaments. Finally, I made everyone my "famous" Chocolate-Peanut Butter balls, a candy much like Reese's, but with coconut and a few other ingredients. I put all the nuts and the candy in bell jars I'd bought at a garage sale. (I added red gingham fabric tops and tied them with green bows.) Each bag got a jar of nuts, a jar of candy, and a picture ornament. I topped each bag with some colored tissue paper I bought just for this - using one color per bag to match the construction paper design. They actually looked quite pretty and festive, all lined up.

The night of my dinner party, I used the "crackers" as place setters. After we'd eaten, I told everyone to open their crackers. They then all had to go to the Christmas tree in our den and figure out which gift bag was theirs, based on the song titles. Someone - not me! - then suggested that each person, on finding his/her bag - actually had to sing part of their carol. Somehow that turned into a full hour of singing by everyone, followed by cups of coffee or hot cocoa and my husband reading from a Christmas story book. (That was for our kids, but everyone sat around listening.)

Later, several of my guests told me this had been one of the most fun and memorable Christmas dinners they'd ever been to. In fact, every so often, someone STILL mentions it. "You remember that year you made those Christmas song bags...."

Necessity is the mother of invention, but I think it's also the mother of creativity and ingenuity. If I'd had more than about $20 to spend on gifts that year (outside of the dinner food money), I really doubt I would've even considered using toilet tissue rolls in my gift-giving.

I once read a book by a supposedly frugal author who made it a point to distinguish between "frugal" - shop at sales! and "cheap" - recycle envelopes. Her time, she explained, was worth more than that penny she would've saved by reusing an envelope. (And is apparently worth more than the environment, too, since she couldn't be bothered to not send something directly to the landfills.)

Cheap, mind you, is a terrible, terrible, shameful thing to be. I'm sure this woman would be horrified by the idea of using toilet tissue rolls in gifts. And yet, because my definition of "cheap" clearly doesn't mirror hers, I was able to devise something that turned out wonderful just with a bit of inspiration and a lot of determination.

You are NOT being cheap when you are creative with things you have. You are NOT being cheap when you re-use something and save it, at least for now, from the garbage heap. (And not only are you preventing it from going into the trash, you aren't buying something new to become more trash later.) You are NOT being cheap when you count your pennies. You are being responsible with the money you have.

A cheap person is one who hordes his wealth and property to himself, someone who readily takes, but never gives.

If you find yourself in a situation where you want to give someone a gift, but you have no money at all to spend, then give your time. This is not cheap, either. In fact, really, it is the most valuable thing you could ever give. I have cleaned a friend's house after the birth of her third child, mowed and weeded someone's yard, and even organized a family member's garage as gifts before and I promise you they appreciated it way more than they would've some Hallmark store trinket.

Nowadays, I spend all year working on Christmas gifts, as I explained in a previous post, and I've found I'm easily able to keep things in the same price range as I did for that crazy song-bag year. I still have to get creative, but though you may shake your head as you read this: being creative with things is easier than you might think. I am not an artist/imaginative type by nature. I'm a logical/organized type. I'm not the dreamer - I'm the stick-in-the-mud, let's-get-it-done kind of person. I don't look at a beautiful lake setting and think, "I should paint that!" I think, "Wow. Bet there are a lot of mosquitoes there." I get my ideas from everywhere - things I see on TV or the internet, magazines I'll skim through at the library, things I see for sale, and then I figure out how can I recreate something like that with the money and items I have? Or sometimes, as in the case of the toilet tissue rolls, the ideas simply flow out from another idea.

I encourage you to get creative, even if you're the list-writing, schedule-making, no-nonsense type like I am - in fact especially so in that case! - and start looking at things you might have laying around your house to see what they can inspire in you. Not just in gift-giving, but in any and all aspects of your life.

And remember, again, you aren't being cheap! Don't let the everything-must-be-new-and-brand-name, consumer-driven mentality that pervades our culture ever make you think so!

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Birthday Budget.

My daughter's birthday is coming up this week, so what better time to talk about kids' birthdays on tiny budgets? ;) We follow a system where each year, one of the children gets a "big" party and one gets a small/family party, then we switch the next year. Last year my daughter had 15 girls attend a ceramic-painting, pizza-eating, raise-the-roof blow-out, while for my son we simply went bowling in the early afternoon when games are just $1 per game. So this year it's my daughter's turn for the "small" party. (More in full post.)

I guess there might be some people who think we are short-changing our kids this way, but we set up this system many years ago and the kids have never once complained. And thinking back on my own childhood, there were years I had big parties - like a dozen girls at a slumber party when I turned 9, and years when there weren't so many; like when I and two friends went to play mini-golf for my 12th birthday. I suspect this is actually true for most people if they stop to consider it.

For my daughter's birthday this year, she elected to just stay home with the family. She chose a movie from the library - The Princess Bride (Which? Hee. My husband and I both started quoting it as soon as she brought it to us. She and my son have never seen it, so we thought it was a great choice.) On her birthday, we'll be having chocolate chip pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Potato Soup and biscuits for lunch. And tacos, Spanish Rice, and refried beans for dinner. All her favorites. We'll also be having chocolate cake. After dinner, we'll watch the movie in the den with popcorn* and some limeade.

Her big gift this year is a digital camera. She's been asking for one for awhile, and we've decided she's demonstrated she's responsible enough to have one. (On a side note - this is a girl who taught herself how to use a Paint program to manipulate graphics and images, how to set up simple webpages, and she even has created her own animation videos online. It is not at all surprising that she wants a digital camera!) I put out word to all our family members and friends that we were looking for a used digital camera if anyone was selling one, and I was contacted by a friend of a friend who sold us a nice Sony camera for $10. My daughter has no idea about this, so I can't wait to see her face when she opens it.

She's also been asking about a sewing machine, so I sent out word about that as well, and wonder of wonders, one turned up that someone was selling. In fact, I was going to give her that as her birthday present, until we were called about the camera. So now I'm keeping the sewing machine to be a Christmas gift.

I made her some new headbands for herself and her Our Generation Doll** (a sorta American Girl doll, but doesn't cost more than our monthly utility bills!), USING THIS REALLY SIMPLE PATTERN.

Last week, my husband took her to a local used bookstore that sells used CDs and let her pick out 4 of her favorite Christian bands/artists. (At a total of just over $7.) We recently got the free iPod through wowio.com for her and now she's able to convert and play the CDs on it.

We were able to get free tickets to the Orlando Opera's youth performance of The Pirates of Penzance, so we'll be going to that at the end of next week as her final birthday gift.

(Note - she's received some gifts in the mail from relatives, but as we haven't opened them yet, I don't know what they are.)

The food costs are negligible - we'd be eating anyway, obviously, and nothing in the meals is anything different/more expensive than something we'd usually eat - and the addition of the cake isn't much. I use a master mix for that and I make the frosting, as well. The cakes I make only cost around $1.50 at most, even if I add sprinkles.

Her gifts cost less than $20. The headbands were made from yarn remnants from other projects, so at most that was $1. To be fair, I should also factor in the gas costs to drive to the opera, so I'll say this birthday is costing us $21.

One other note: We do decorate for birthdays. We have a "Happy Birthday!" banner that we purchased years ago. We blow up a few balloons and tie them to the chair of the birthday person. We have a "Celebrate" plate from Pampered Chef that the birthday person eats on all day. (Um, LOL! I do wash it between meals! I don't mean someone walks around with the plate all day, eating off it.) Ours is an older version I bought at a garage sale a long time ago. It's blue and white. They have a more colorful one now, so maybe I'll stumble across it at a garage sale, too, sometime. :) We also have a special tablecloth that we bring out. I made it when my oldest turned 2. I bought a couple of yards of green fabric, hemmed it all around, and appliqued circles of yellow, red, and blue on it and embroidered black "strings" to make balloons.


*I'm not typically a fan of extra kitchen gadgets. I don't often buy things that serve only one purpose, but I do have one of those hand-crank popcorn pots. It produces MUCH better popcorn than what you get out of a microwave, and we won't even talk about the cardboard-tasting horrors that come out of air-poppers! Also, even with some salt and butter added, a really big bowl of popcorn costs less than .20 cents when you pop it yourself and it hardly takes that much more time than the microwave - about 5 minutes. I've seen them selling new as low as $20 and you can probably find them for less on auction sites (Though watch the shipping costs!). If your family eats popcorn at least once a week, it wouldn't take very long for you to pay off that upfront cost in savings from not buying the microwave version. Plus you can avoid the questions that have recently arisen concerning the possible toxicity of microwave popcorn.

**OUR GENERATION DOLLS - We purchased one of these awhile back, using a gift certificate someone gave me. It's held up just fine with her playing and taking it with her to her Keepers at Home club meetings where they read and discuss American Girl books. My mother has made the doll some very cute outfits, and made matching sundresses for my daughter and the doll.

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Gift giving all year.

One of the ways I'm able to keep the costs of gifts down is I shop all year long. No, not at the mall! My gifts come from garage sales, used bookstores, thrift stores and dollar stores. Yep. I really do give "used" gifts.

Saturday mornings are shopping mornings. We get up extra early, have breakfast, and head out. We start with a few garage sales, weather permitting. We don't always buy anything - but sometimes we get fantastic deals. Next we'll go to a local thrift store or dollar store. (Or we go to these first if there are no garage sales to hit.) We might not buy anything there either. And once a month we drop in at a used bookstore. After that, we'll do our grocery shopping and come home.

Last fall at a community garage sale, I found a woman selling very pretty, expensive teacups and saucers. Each one was a different pattern. She'd apparently thought to start collecting them, buying them one at a time, then changed her mind. I was surprised they'd been passed up by other buyers, as nice as they were, and I bought the lot - 5 cups and 5 saucers - for $2.50 total. I have seen cups like these for sale in "boutique" shops* for as much as $40.

I brought my cups home, washed them, and put them away in my closet. A few months ago, while at a grocery store, I found boxes of flavored teas marked all the way down to $1. They don't expire until mid-2008, but the store had decided to quit carrying the brand - Twinings. Nice tea, by the way! I guess we Americans are too accustomed to our Lipton or something. I bought 5 boxes.

Using THIS FREE PATTERN, I made 5 bookmarks. (All five only took one weekend.)

Finally, I bought 5 plain, white gift bags at fifty cents a piece, and I always keep green tissue paper "in stock." (Green because it works year-round, including Christmas.)

So far, I've given away 2 of my gift bags and have 3 more to give. They have been birthday presents for woman friends & family.

The final product is this: I take a bag and paint a floral design in colors to match the teacup & saucer, using the "one stroke" method - a very easy painting style to master. I also paint the recipient's name. In the bag, I put the teacup and saucer, box of tea, crocheted bookmark, plus one or two paperback books I purchased at the used book store. (Books that I know the recipient will enjoy, based on their reading tastes and favorite authors.). Finally, I add a bag of CINNAMON SPICED ALMONDS, and a homemade birthday card, encouraging my friend to take an evening off for herself. I top this with some crumpled green tissue paper and I'm done.

Even with the cost of the almonds' ingredients - the most expensive part of the gifts! - each of these bags has cost me only around $5. This is actually on the high end of gift giving for me, but still I'm able to assemble a lovely little gift for less than half the cost of many things people frequently give out as gifts - like music CDs, and for WAY less than those fancy gift baskets you see everywhere.

But all this only works because I'm *constantly* on the look-out. I really do shop & create year-round. By utilizing this method, I'm not stuck at the last minute with rushing out to buy some over-priced gadget or knick-knack, and my gifts show a lot of love, time, and care - something you can't really demonstrate with a plain box of chocolates!


*"boutique shops" - No, I never buy anything from these little gift & clothing stores. But my MIL loves to poke around in them, so I have had occasion to be in some. I just wander around and marvel at the prices and make note of any ideas the items spark for me. :)

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Christmas. In June.

I mentioned yesterday that I'd found patterns (free) to use to make a couple of Christmas gifts. If you read my ABOUT ME page, you'll know the kind of gifts I usually give. They're typically "themed." This year will have a theme, though I am deviating from it in the case of my mother and MIL. (Who, hopefully won't stumble across this blog and spoil the surprise!) Both complimented some of the filet crochet items I've made for my own home, so I thought I'd make them something for theirs.

For all other adults/couples, this year's theme was decided back in January, when a local dollar store had plastic colanders 2 for $1. This year's theme will be...

An Italian Meal.

Before you give up on me completely, let me explain further. A few days ago, I was in Wal-Mart and found a bolt of red-checked fabric on the $1 a yard table. I bought 2 yards. I'll cut this down to make napkin sets - monogramming them with white thread. For my kids' contribution, I'll be having them make napkin rings. Not sure what kind yet, but I'll research it to find some cute ideas. I'm sorta picturing something made with fake grape-vines at the moment.

The napkins and rings will go into the colanders. We'll also include a box of dry pasta and a bag of HOMEMADE SPAGHETTI SEASONING MIX - minus the freeze-dried green pepper, which? I've never seen in any supermarket I've been in and I imagine it would cost way too much anyway. I'll include a can of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato sauce, to mix with the seasoning. I will also include a batch of CRANBERRY-ORANGE BISCOTTI. I'll be adding some Italian recipes printed from on-line, too, and finally, I'll be adding inexpensive plastic pasta scoops (less than $1 at Walmart) and crocheted hotpads - made from green yarn I actually have left-over from last year's scarf gifts!

Final cost - depending on ingredients prices, should be around $30 - $35 for everything.

So what's with the Christmas talk in the middle of the year? My point is, in order to not go crazy or broke sometime mid-December, you should already be planning your gifts now. For one, it will give you plenty of time to make things, if you need. And two - you should be keeping your eyes open every time you set foot in a store. You never know what you might find that will spark your imagination and can then become a fabulous gift.

The best part about this kind of planning is it really frees you up during the holiday season, to enjoy time with your family. I'll be making the biscotti in late October or early November and freezing it - just as soon as the cranberries go on sale for Thanksgiving. We'll have everything else done by then, so rather than face the angry hordes of frazzled shoppers who hit the stores on "Black Friday", our holiday season will be filled with peaceful nights at home and visits with friends and family.

Also? With this method, you're spreading out your costs by purchasing things over the course of the year - not all at once at the end of it. It's easier to shave $5 out of your budget here and there than it is to try and take one large hit at once.

Over the next few months, I'll post more about gifts I've given in the past, to hopefully give you some ideas you might use. Remember, anyone can go buy some ornate pewter picture frame, or an over-priced kitchen appliance that will never get used, or a $17 scented candle that will most likely give the recipient a wretched headache if she lights it, but you can show your friends and family how much you love them by dedicating your time and creativity to a gift truly from your hands and your heart, not just your pocketbook.

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Crochet Patterns.

I've finally found patterns I'd like to use to create this year's Christmas gifts for my mother and MIL. Of course, I'll have to start pretty much now to get them done in time!

ROSE PATTERN
IRIS PATTERN

I will need to be on the look-out now for frames for these.

I already have the thread I can use, which cost me about $4. If I spend no more than $2 per frame, I should have both gifts completed for under $10.

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