Make a Difference Monday: Generous Gifts

Over the past 10 years I can't count the number of times I have wanted to give a brighter day to someone and was unable to do so. Being extremely creative and frugal I have come up with a way to make a difference for someone and stay under budget.

Shopping with coupons you can make extremely nice gift baskets for an extremely low cost. If you catch baskets on sale that's great! If you don't, be creative. Look around for non-traditional containers for your gift baskets. There is a college student I am in the process of making a "Gift basket" for. I have yet to come up with a very creative container for the bulk of things but I did put some Koolaid singles, a few Crystal light single serving packs, a few granola bars, some cereal bars, some individual bags of kashi crackers all in a ziploc bag that has snowmen on it. I wrote on it "Stay Cool, We'll protect your snacks!!"

I also plan to include some shampoo & bodywash and deodorant. Hopefully I can come up with witty little statements for those items - for the Deodorant I plan to attach a tag that says something like "For when your exams start to make you sweat!" I've gotten some packs of pens for free recently, I think I may include some of them and maybe a notebook also. This is a college student after all. I have a few rather LARGE insulated mugs/cups that may be suitable or actually I just emptied a large formula can. I bet I could make that look rather stylish with some paint or some contact paper with funny phrases written on it.

If you don't have a large stockpile at your disposal or have random containers to fill at your disposal try this:

Sometimes you can manage to get plastic cups for free or extremely cheap with coupons - the solo cups are perfect for this!!!

Remember that it is totally okay to open packages. I was stuck for a long time being stingy with my Kashi. I wanted to share it with people so they could see how AMAZING this food is but I also wanted to eat it myself so I was conflicted. I know it seems simple but I realized if I open the box I can put individual items in a gift basket or share individual sized snacks with people.

In our cup I mentioned, you could put 2 different flavors of granola bars, two or three different flavors of crystal light, Do you request a lot of samples to get the coupons? stick a sample of something appropriate in the cup. Look around your house for ideas. Packets of koolaid are bright and make a great addition to little snack cups that you are giving away.

It is a simple and inexpensive gift that can show appreciation to someone without your having to spend a lot of money. If you are a member of swagbucks You might want to see about gifting them a $5.00 amazon.com gift card you have bought from the swagstore.

I'm telling you - if someone left me a plastic cup with some pens, a granola bar, a cereal bar, an instant coffee stick, an instant creamer stick, some crystal light and a post it note with a handwritten note advising me I have an amazon.com giftcard waiting for me - I'd be a happy girl!!! I don't know about you :)

Just be creative in your giving. Giving doesn't have to be boring or feel like a chore :)

Have you recently given anything or been creative in your giving and want to share? please comment below and share with us all :)