Well, the season fast coming upon us, I’m wondering if you’d like to share, cheap and cheerful gifts you’ve either given or received.
Maybe something that stood out among much more costly gifts.
Or something that really touched someone, but cost you not much.
One year, for my elder single brother, who couldn’t be bothered with Xmas decor, a small artificial tree (12-18"), in an appropriately sized box with packing to keep it safe and secure, year to year. I strung battery powered lights on it, small ornaments, tiny bows, even made my own mini tinsel. I wired everything right onto the tree, wrapped the battery pack to look like a gift for under the tree. It was small, popped out of the box ready to go, no fuss, no muss. It was fun to find the decorations, and enjoyable to put together. And he actually used it every year, and always commented on it at Xmas.
A couple of years later, I made a variant for a close friend with very small digs. A much smaller tree, maybe 6-8", but it was for a girl who enjoys Christmas, so I didn’t wire everything onto the tree. Instead found little boxes for the tiny ornaments. Fashioned paper clips into hangers. Same decorative packing box, but lots of fun assembly required! She adores it and still enjoys it to this day.
When I was a kid some relatives from Alabama sent my family a big box of citrus fruit. It was fantastic - we never get citrus that good up here. I think my Mom and I nearly came to blows over the last grapefruit. It’s still one of the best gifts I remember getting.
I spent the better part of a year compiling family recipes and typing them into a Word document. I printed out the cookbook and put the pages into sheet protectors in a 3-ring binder. Everyone loved it. I want to do it again and take out my ex husband’s family’s recipes and add some new ones. This time I want to use some cookbook software and have an actual book printed.
This wasn’t a Christmas gift but a just-for-the-hell-of-it gift that I thought was really touching.
Around 1994 or so, I was absurdly overenthusiastic about the hilarious corny-ness of MIDI files. I had managed to amass quite a few of them (despite being on dial-up AOL at the time.)
This was before having a CD burner on a home computer was common, but he worked at Stanford and had access to much better equipment. One day he randomly copied all my MIDI files to his work computer and burned them onto CDs for me so I could listen to them any time I wanted.
I was choked up because of a) the time and thought that went into it, and b) he and his family are the WORST. GIFT. GIVERS of all time. Whenever someone starts a “bad gifts you’ve received” thread I have a laundry list of thoughtless offenses. This was quite a departure for him.
I’ve made some Christmas music CDs that were big hits. (no pun intended) I even told them to open before X-Mass. You can make one for kids and include all the good stuff. (barking dogs, chipmunks, Wizard) and get them started right.
Back in the 70s, I did this on a typewriter with both the family recipes and my mother’s address book. This way, she could look up stuff without it falling to pieces in her hands.
Last year my aunt gave us all “friendship soup”. It was basically all the ingredients for a soup, including bouillon and seasoning, as well as lentils and grains, layered to look pretty in a jar tied with a ribbon around it. I saved it for an emergency and I certainly was glad for it this fall as a working student parent… that reminds me, I thanked her but I’d better send a note that we finally had it. It couldn’t have cost her more than $4/jar and I think she shipped it in decorated baggies in flat rate envelopes to her siblings.
Not exactly thrifty, but… I talked my aunt into passing the family photo archive to me. I scanned pictures and some documents and uploaded them to a photosite. Then I made an photoalbum. In this case it had pictures of my maternal grandparents, pictures of their parents, and group photo’s of my aunts and their kids and grandkids.
I made some family trees with the info in the archive and this excel template. I showed a earlier version to my aunts and mom and got them to comment on the pictures, so I could write captions. The photobook has just been finished, and I ordered some prints to give to my relatives. The books come to 40 bucks each, but I expect they will be a hit.
Along the same lines, when I was visiting my parents one summer I got bored and started scanning my favorite family photos onto their computer, then transferred them to my netbook. At Christmastime I bought one of those digital picture frames (not cheap, but not expensive really either - I think it was around $30?) and loaded it up with a bunch of photos I thought my mom would like. She was ecstatic. (Ecstatic to the point of slamming my brother’s gift by saying “Did you see what your SISTER got me?!”)
I did a variant of it back in 97. I was working thirds as security at a bank operations center, and there was an IBM selectric at the desk. I asked the bank’s security officer if I could use it during the overnight if I brought in my own paper and got the OK [we were supposed to basically sit there and do 1 walking round of about 15 minutes every hour. Very boring!] so I made my own version of Cooking for Bachelor Idiots, took it to a Kinkos and had it copied and comb bound with the sort of almost plastic heavy card stock covers. I had them do about 20 copies and gave them out for Christmas. I did it mainly because almost all the guys I gamed with were single and liked my cooking, so I decided that a basic cookbook with the recipes they liked explained so they could recreate them would be fun. The guys we have managed to keep in contact with have made sure their wives can cook some of the stuff I used to cook for them =)
Last year I gave my brother, who had asked my advice on how cover the walls of his house with hardy plants to discourage graffiti, a " grow your own rose" box. I had bought a second hand book on care of roses and on how to make an urban street garden (you know, where you lift up a row of streetwalk tiles and start a little garden? ) I added a pack of chemical rose manure and a roseplant I had bougth for my own garden but hadn’t planted in the end. He either liked it or is a good actor.
Best free gift given: before Grandmother went into nursing care, she still insisted on hosting a holiday meal. So my mom and aunt would get her out of the house for the day, usually for Christmas shopping and lunch in the nearest city, while my cousin and I gave the house a deep-clean and let the kids set up the tree. And then on the day of the party, someone would be dispatched to help with oven duty, since we worried she’d hurt herself bending down to put a 20 lb turkey in or removing the industrial sized pan of hot dressing from the oven. My brother was usually best at managing that in a tactful way that didn’t imply that she might not be physically able to handle the job.
Best inexpensive gift received: when I was expecting my first child, I lived far from family and in a city I hated. My grand-uncle learned that I craved oranges like nobody’s business during my pregnancy, so he sent me a monthly box from his neighbors’ grove. No orange in the history of citrus fruit has ever surpassed those, and getting that box every month was like a hug from that sweet old man.
My niece already has too many toys and too small a house. So for her 2nd birthday my mom and I made a photo album for her of all her family members (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins). I just went through Facebook and pulled out photos of the relevant people and printed the photos on a photo printer.
She loves going through and saying people’s names!
We’re thinking for Christmas of making a book of pictures of her favorite places. Park, grammy’s house, church, etc.
Definitely a good idea for the kid who has everything!
When I was growing up, my grandparents lived about 5 1/2 hours away. One Thanksgiving, we packed up the entire Thanksgiving meal and drove down. Dishes, tablecloth, napkins, serving pieces, silverware, flowers, turkey, pie, mashed potatoes. All of it. It was a total surprise as it was all carried into the house. The whole thing even made the town newspaper (ok, it was a really small town.)
I was just talking to someone that is doing this for a long time friend - make up 100 notes with “Do you remember when” messages on it. Big memories, little memories, serious and funny. The instructions are to read 2 a week.
Or you could do what I did one year for my daughter. A personalized matching game. I printed photos of people and things in her life, two of each photo, on index cards and printed a drawing she had done on the back with her name. I just wish I had laminated them so they lasted longer. She demanded a second set with updated pics a few years later when the first wore out or got lost.
I was eight. Money was really tight for my parents they teamed up with my grandmother. Mom and dad bought me the American Girl doll (dolls with their own series of books setting them as a character during a certain historical period - I had the WWII era one). Grandma made about two dozen historically-accurate outfits for the doll. Apparently she told my parents that she made most of her and her children’s clothing by hand back then, and now she was retired without kids to look after, so it wasn’t a big deal to buy a couple yards of cheap fabric and spend some time sewing doll clothes.
I still consider it one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.