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Teaching your children how to be thoughtful and caring when buying Christmas gifts should be an important part of Christmas. It is also important to teach them how to manage their own money during the holiday season. Be sure to let your kids get involved in Christmas by letting them make or purchase their own presents, even if they are small or low-cost. If the children are too young to handle money, encourage them to make gifts for those they would like to give presents to. Homemade gifts are more personal, and make for a fun and inexpensive Christmas for the kids. Creating an Inexpensive Gift Basket There are a number of things you can do to save money during the holiday season. Think about making a creative homemade gift before going out and purchasing a gift. Gift baskets are both fun and easy to create and can be put together rather inexpensively. Take a picture of yourself, your family, or your children and put it in an inexpensive frame and give it as a gift to family members and close friends. You can also add more practical items to the gift basket, such as cookie mix in a jar, a disposable camera, a hand-decorated photo album, note cards and a book of stamps, craft supplies, a movie rental gift certificate, a small radio or clock, sewing materials, a handy flashlight with batteries, home-made cookie mix complete with a recipe for baking, home baked bread with the recipe, new paper and a pen, or a gift certificate to their favorite book or department store. These inexpensive Christmas gift ideas may actually get used by the recipient, unlike many more expensive gifts. Other Money Saving Ideas An excellent way to save money during the Christmas season is to spend less on wrapping paper and Christmas cards. If you own a computer, you can design and print out your Christmas cards on inexpensive card stock paper. This also allows you to personalize the cards by adding a personal picture, writing your own sayings, and adding your own images to them, such as an image of your decorated house. You can even do this without a computer. Simply glue or tape your images to the card and write the Christmas message by hand. You may even want to let the kids make the cards, especially the cards intended for their grandparents. You can also make your own wrapping paper by buying less expensive paper such as that used to prepare packages for mailing. This type of paper can be found anywhere mail supplies are sold. You can decorate the paper with sponges dipped in craft paints, rubber stamps, or potatoes cut in half and carved into various Christmas shapes, similar to the look of a rubber stamp. Immerse the imprint into paint and have a lot of fun designing your very own wrapping paper. To give your gifts a more antique or rustic look, you can use a combination of brown wrapping paper and twine instead of a ribbon. Spending less on cards and wrapping paper will save you money and allow you to spend more on other great Christmas gift ideas. Putting Some Thought Into the Gift Put some thought and imagination into different gift ideas before you decide to go out and buy a Christmas gift. You will probably come up with a number of better, more personal gifts, if you do a little work and make the gift yourself. For a great and invaluable gift, refinish a cabinet or chest and give it to a family member or close friend. Think of items people wouldn’t normally buy for themselves and what their interests are. You can give things like a gift certificate to the local pet store for the pet lover on your Christmas list. Give tickets to the movie theater to the movie lover, or a fascinating book to an avid reader. A few other ideas such as prepaid photo developing envelopes, a bag of cashews, or a month’s unlimited tanning at a local tanning salon may also be well appreciated. Most of these gifts, while being very easy on your budget, will surprise and please the recipient. These are just a few examples of inexpensive Christmas gifts. Even the fussiest people can’t pass up on a gift that that is both thoughtful and has a personal touch.
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