Warning: Do not try while hungry...

The economy pretty much stinks these days. Christmas should never be a burden and homemade gifts are no longer the macaroni-necklace, toilet paper roll Christmas tree crafts anymore. It’s super easy to give the illusion of spending a lot of money (although that’s definitely not the expectation) without the cash. Besides, when the recipient finds out you did it yourself, that’s even better!

Got a candy or dessert that is your specialty? Find a cute way to box it up as a gift!

I made these fudgy bon-bons for work a few weeks ago.

They look professional, right? Find some little boxes, wrap some ribbon around it and voila! Instant look of expensive fudge shops but cheap solution in your own kitchen.

Children on your list? Try these chocolate mice!

I think they are just adorable!

Got a tea lover (like myself) on your list? Pomegranate Winter Tea!

Click here for 26 fun little gift-giving-worthy recipes!

The struggles of gifts

Quick update, hubby’s going to live – doc said his lungs looked much better. We get results back tomorrow, follow up on Thursday and another CT scan in 6 weeks but he was back to being annoyingly ridiculous yesterday so I deem him back to normal!

My brother got married Friday. His fiance’s birthday was last Tuesday. Then there’s Christmas. It’s a lot of gift-giving in a short amount of time but that’s okay. I’m up for the challenge.

I already said earlier I’m giving her address labels for her birthday. Now it’s time for Christmas.

My original gift was a Newlywed Cookbook (hey, my brother said she was on a cookbook kick right now)

And a cookbook stand (Amazon) $14.99

But turns out, great minds think alike and my mom already got her a cookbook stand :P (I guess we know where I got my gift giving abilities from?)

Plan B.

On to Bed Bath and Beyond!!

They had registered for white square dishes at Crate & Barrel. Problem is, there is no Crate & Barrel around here. Luckily, I found this pretty little serving set that I think will match their dishes.

Price tag is $34.99 but we know Bed Bath and Beyond always have super coupons, right? Put that with the gift card I redeemed from my credit card points and total cost to me = $0.00.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering…that Flashback Atari set? A total hit. One of my brother’s college friends was also up when we were doing Christmas and I got the high-five from him and the “How is this humanly possible?” from my brother. To put it into perspective, it beat out the bike Santa gave him when he was 5 years old. Take that, Santa J

Yours Truly,

First off, sincere apologies for the lack of blogging. I’m currently a full time grad student, full time wife, full time mommy (of the two most precious pups ever!) and now holding down a full time job. Needless to say, it’s taken a little time to try to juggle all this! I still probably won’t update every single day but I’ll do what I can, when I can!

I hope this isn’t too similar to one I’ve already done, but I ordered a gift last night and remembered how this is one of the simplest, budget-friendly and usable gifts I’ve found.

Address labels!

I’ve mentioned that my brother gets married next month. His fiance’s birthday is the Monday the week of the wedding. Now, I’m not trying to go cheapskate here, but her birthday is Monday, the 29^th, their wedding is Friday, the 3^rd (hubby and I both are taking 2 days off from work and driving 7 hours both ways) and then the Christmas season is here. I can’t spend a million dollars so I needed to figure out something that would be appreciated, usable…and cheap!

Address labels come in virtually any design, color, shape, etc. that you could possibly imagine. I ordered these:

They have their future shared last name initial, both of their names and their address together. I contemplated just putting her name on them but thought since they were getting married that week (meaning lots of thank-you notes to write!) it might come in handy to have both. And who doesn’t love seeing you and your new husband’s name on things?

So there you have it. $8.96 at Current (a catalogue I remember my mom buying quite a few nifty things from!). It’s not a last-minute gift idea since it takes up to 10 days to get them (personalized stuff takes longer, remember that!). But if you’re like me and try to plan ahead (key word: try), it’s a great possibility. If you want to add some stuff to it, add some notecards or something. I would have done that in this case but I gave her some personalized notecards with another gift recently – that might be a bit overkill!

Timeless

One of the best and easiest ways to make a personalized gift is with a shadow box. It really goes with any occasion.

For example, for our wedding, one of Brad’s aunt made us a shadow box. It has some pretty little decorations, a picture from our save the date cards, and our invitation. She told us she does that for every wedding they go to. It’s also special to us because she and her husband were the ones who drove us from the reception to our hotel (and then off to our after-party!). I didn’t really know this particular aunt and uncle very well before the wedding but they were one of the best parts of the wedding. They shared their words of wisdom and well wishes the whole way to the hotel. We have it hanging in the kitchen now and I think of them and that ride often.

 We got married in the fall, hence the leaves and fallish colors!

Brad’s cousin Tara turns 16 today. When I was in North Carolina last weekend I stopped at  HomeGood’s and found a beautiful shadow box for less than $15. I came home, printed some pictures from the family beach trip we took this summer and bam! Instant personalized gift! I’ve been tossing around putting some little pieces of memorabilia around inside but I’ve been holding off – I want this shadowbox to be something that she can change out the pictures in. Obviously I would never change the pictures in my wedding shadowbox. But for a 16 year old – I don’t want her to feel like I spent SOOO much time on it that she can never change the pictures. This shadowbox is incredibly easy – it came with a few pushpins and the front cover literally just lifts open. I want this shadowbox to be a base but something she can personalize however she wants down the road.

Whether it’s a timeless shadowbox or just a “right now” shadowbox, it’s a great way to personalize a gift if you’re on a limited budget. Mine cost less than $20 (and would have cost closer to $15 if I could have found my flash drive – then I could have printed the pictures at CVS!). 

Tasty Gift

In my family, there’s a tradition. For every bride in the family (doesn’t matter if you are born into the family or marrying into the family), you are given a family cookbook. All of the families are asked to contribute and a lot of recipes are ones that were handed down from grandparents, etc.


This past weekend was my future sister-in-law’s wedding shower. My mother and aunt both attended with me and we had a great time talking about the “good ‘ol days” – (okay, so maybe they talked about the good ‘ole days and I just provided some comic relief). They were talking about how much the cookbook has evolved over the years – the first one started with just some recipe cards put into a box. At some point it went to 3 ring binders.

I was the first bride in my family in….well over a decade. And it was worth the wait!

Thanks to my best friend Kristi, my mom was able to put together the absolute best wedding gift ever – a Tastebook Cookbook.

This book is fantastic. Not only can you totally personalize it the way you want, its extremely durable and looks absolutely professional.

Here are some pictures:

Another great feature is you can add recipes. When I got married, my mom solicited some recipes from my brother to put in the cookbook. She went ahead and bought two cookbooks when I got married, assuming that my brother would get married at some point. His cookbook didn’t have any recipes from me in it though. So once he got engaged, my mom had me go online and order some “replacement” cards with my recipes and pictures on them! So with every bride comes a few more recipes!

Obviously, this cookbook was a hit at the shower. The bride’s mother even commented on how she’d like to put one together for HER family – and it’s a great way to store family recipes. You can put pictures with the recipes and even write notes on the recipe. There are a lot of recipes from my grandmother in my cookbook, which means a lot to me since she was such a great cook but died before I had a chance to really appreciate it.

It says they start around $19.99 but the cheapest I saw started at $29.99. They’re worth it, though. Great quality and really make it into something special.

The Wheel Keeps a-Spinnin'

Sometimes it's more about the practicality than the novelty.


I had three guestbook attendants at my wedding. One was a cousin - the only cousin I have who is remotely near my age. One was my now brother-in-law's girlfriend and the other was my brother's now-fiance. I wanted to give them something nice, usable, and kind of fall related.


You'll find that I am a rather big Etsy junkie. You can find nearly anything on Etsy and my experiences have always been great. The sellers on Etsy are much easier to negotiate with if you're ordering multiple items and it's easier to change details that don't exactly work. Not really something you can do at major department stores.


Since I got married in October, I wanted something to represent that crisp, "getting colder" season that I love so much. So I found a friend from high school on Etsy who...

Makes beautiful pottery! She had made a mug or two and posted them on her Etsy page and I really loved them.

At first, I was only going to get one mug per attendant because the price was a little steeper than I wanted to pay.

But we started talking and she gave me a deal if I gave them each two (which is what I wanted to do anyway)

So they each got two mugs stuffed with yummy hot chocolate! 


Go to Lovin Designs on Etsy for pottery, jewelry and crotchet goodies.


Also - hot chocolate, tea, coffee, candy...it's so easy to cater to the recipient with something like these mugs. And I don't know about you, but I drink out of a mug at least once a day :)

Diapers and Towels, oh my!

This gift is more of a do-it-youself-er but the good news is, you can use it for baby showers or wedding showers!

Let's start with the baby shower. Someone, somewhere, came up with this idea to turn diapers into a cake. An experienced cake looks something like...

Shown here...

Mine, on the other hand, looked more like this:

You can google tutorials all day long on YouTube. Just find one with the amount of instruction that you feel you need and go to town. In a nutshell, you're just rolling up diapers and sticking rubber bands around them to keep them rolled up. Although the mother-to-be I made this for had registered for diapers, Target happened to be out of them. I wound up with some of the baby powder smelling ones which made the  experience kind of pleasant actually :) We found some fun ribbon that my mom had saved from somewhere and hot glued them around the diapers. There is also a big stick (think wooden skewers) that goes in the middle and you form the diapers in a circle around that (using a large rubber band to keep the diapers together too). Yeah, I'm not the best instruction giver. I would definitely google on YouTube because the tutorial I watched was fantastic. You can't really see it in my picture, but there's also the cutest pair of baby shoes tied at the top with the big ribbon. I thought it was a fun way to tie in something besides diapers!

Then you can do essentially the same thing with towels. I haven't actually done this myself, but I saw one at my friend Amber's wedding. Hers had those little fake wedding bands clipped to parts of it, which I thought was a nice addition. Here's an example of a Towel wedding cake...

Of course, depending on their color scheme, it could get interesting, but just simple, solid towels make this a unique and fun gift. If you're giving a shower, this makes a great centerpiece, too!