A friend of mine from church who recently moved to Utah had posted on her blog about her amazingly frugal Christmas and I was so impressed that I asked her to write more about what she did and how, so I could share it with you. She has graciously accepted, and below is her account on how she was able to do Christmas gifts and stockings for her entire family of five. She has two preschoolers (a boy and a girl) and a baby not quite a year old.
Here's her account:
Probably in September I started keeping a close eye on freecycle.com for anything that I thought might be good gifts for my hubby or the kids. I also requested a couple of items on freecycle, and we did get one but the others I didn't really hear anything about. I was able to find something wonderful for each of the kids (a bike helmet for my daughter and an alarm clock for my son, both of which they had asked for and both were in really good condition). I also came across a doll play house and was able to quickly snap that up (I had requested to get emails whenever something was posted so that I would have a better chance of getting an item that was posted).
Another day I took the kids to Deseret Industries with me and let them look around and show me all sorts of toys and things that they liked. Then I went back and got them each something they had requested (and I found something that the baby would like too) and I didn't spend more than $4 total...one of the items was a hard back compilation of 7 Dora the Explorer books which is normally $14 but I got it for 50 cents! So the kids were covered for gifts from us, but of course both Grandmas also asked what they kids might like and we told them of a couple other items they had requested.
My husband and I decided a few months before Christmas that we wanted to make each other gifts and that we could spend up to $10. I had gathered different ideas from friends and knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had an extra blank journal lying around and I started a daily journal for him where each night I would think about the day, think about all the good things he did that day whether it was helping with the dishes, getting the kids ready for bed, taking out the trash, giving me a compliment, anything...and I would write down that experience and tell him how grateful I was for him and how much I love him...each day I did this for 3 months and then the night before Christmas I wrapped it up and gave it to him Christmas morning. And since I didn't spend the $10 on my homemade gift I was able to go buy him a new work shirt from WalMart on Black Friday.
My hubby knows I love to read; in fact, I'm always reading. I have books everywhere and am constantly losing my bookmarks and end up using some part of the book to keep it open which isn't good for the spine binding or the pages. So he found some famous quotes on the benefits/joys of reading, printed them out on nice cardstock paper, and then cut them, laminated them (at Kinkos) and put a ribbon through the top. It was so thoughtful. And then he used a gift card that he had kept from Barnes and Noble and bought me a new book...so he sort of cheated but it was his gift card money that he could do whatever he wanted with so I was okay with that.
As for stockings we decided on $20 all together, so about $5 a person (we didn't include the baby because she doesn't care about stockings or eat candy). I was in charge of stuffing the kids’ and my hubby’s stockings and he did mine. So I was lucky because I had $15 to work with whereas he had $5(but I think he went over a little). My hubby also went out to JC Penney just before Christmas because they were having tons of sales and bought the baby a new sleeper since she just had the one gift that I found at Deseret Industries. I think altogether we spent around $50 for our Christmas this year which is pretty good.
Pretty good? Pretty good?!? I'd call this incredibly impressive.
