Win £200. Festive Fivers Competition 2008: The best Xmas pressies for under £5

WONDERFULWENDY

PRESENT- PLANT A TREE
BUY OR MAKE- BUY
COST -£5.00
WHERE- WWW.DAILYMAIL/WOODLANDTRUST
FOR A FIVER YOU CAN GET A TREE PLANTED IN A FOREST IN ENGLAND VIA THE WOODLAND TRUST.
FOR YOU FIVER YOU GET THOSE TRICKY GIFTS, AUNTS UNCLES GODPARENTS WRAPPED UP.
YOU SEND OFF YOUR FIVER AND THEY GET A TREE PLANTED AND A CERTIFICATE IN THEIR NAME FOR THE TREE
SAVE THE PLANET!!!!!

Juliav_2

• Name of present? HAPPY CHRISTMAS HAMPER
  
• Do you make it or buy it? MAKE IT/BUY IT
  
• Total Cost? £5 or under
  
• Details: Buy practical supermarket items such as washing powder, toilet rolls, cereal - any staple items. Take advantage of buy one, get one free offers in the supermarket and build up a stock of things.. We all hate buying staple items as they take a chunk of our weekly shopping budget away. Why not treat your friends/family and buy it for them. The receipient will really notice the difference having the spare £5 to buy other items or treat themselves with it. Get a cardboard box, decorate and put all items inside.
  

Juliav_2

• Name of present? Funny Photo in frame
  
• Do you make it or buy it? Make it
  
• Total Cost? £1 approx

Buy a cheap frame, or use an old one you have lying around. Look at either of the websites below. The first is a website that you upload a photograph and cartoonise it and edit it - the result is fantastic. The second website listed is for you to upload a photo and it will put the face of your picture onto different people's bodies. Equally as fantastic.

Both websites are free to use and produce fantastic results, they can be framed, blown up, made into cards. Really versatile and very funny!

http://www.befunky.com/cartoonizer/index.php

http://www.faceinhole.com/gb/browse-scenarios/0/all/most-recent/ever/1/

Juliav_2

• Name of present? GIfts for dieters!!
  
• Do you make it or buy it? Make it/buy it
  
• Total Cost? £5 or under
  

Christmas is a tricky time for those watching the calories, so support your friends/family who are trying to change unhealthy habits but making them one or all of the gifts below. Package them all nicely in boxes, jars or bottles with a tag including calorie details.

Nutty Chocolate Truffles
59 calories per truffle - makes 40.

200g plain chocolate, broken into pieces
100g crunchy peanut butter
100g trifle sponges
2 tbsp tia maria/baileys - experiment with any liquers left in cupboard
75g sprinkles, such a choclate vermicelli

Melt 150g chocolate and all the peanut butter in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. When melted, remove from the heat.
Whizz the trifle sponges in a food processor to make fine crumbs. Stir into the melted chcoolate alogn with the Tia Maria until combined.
Using your hands, roll a generous teaspoonful of the mixture into a small bal Repeat to make 40 balls in total. Transfer balls to a baking tray and chill them in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile heat the remaining chocolate in another bowl over a pan of simmering water until melted. Set aside to cool. Put the sprinkles in separate bowls. This bit gets a little messy, but it is the only way to coat the truffles perfectly. Take a small amount of the melted chocolate and put it into the palm of one hand. Put 1 chocolate truffle ball into the chocolate and roll between both hands until lightly coated. Then roll in the sprinkles until coated. Leave to set. Once set, put the truffles into a small paper sweetcases/small gift box.

Spiced Vinegar
3 calories per tbsp - easy to make a lovely gift for anyone, use it on salad or to marinate fish/meat.

1 litre cider vinegar
1 tbsp juniper berries, plus a few to decorate
1 tbsp whole cloves, plus extra to decorate
6 black peppercorns
2 small cinnamon sticks
2 large fresh rosemary sprigs, plus extra to decorate
1 bay leaf
Muslin for straining

Put the vinegar, juniper, spices, rosemary and bay leaf into a saucepan. Bring to the boil, then carefully transfer to a large bowl, cover and leave to marinate for 2 hours.
Strain the vinegar through muslin and pour into sterilised bottles. Add a sprig of rosemary and a few juniper berries and cloves to each bottle to decorate and seal.

Earl Grey & Chilli Jelly
22 calories per 2 tsp - this will last up to a year in a cool dry place. Serve as an accompaniment to roast meats, cold meat or cheese. Can be added to sauces to add spice.

8 Earl Grey tea bags
2 heaped tsp red chillis, finely chopped
550g preserving sugar
100ml lemon juice (juice of about 3 lemons)

Put 850ml water into a large pan and bring to the boil. Add the tea bags and remove from the heat. Leave to infuse for 5 minutes, then remove the tea bags, squeezing the excess water into the pan. Discard the tea bags.
Add remaining ingredients and bring to a rolling boil, then simmer rapidly for about 15 minutes.
Allow the jelly to cool slightly, then stir well to distribute the chilli flakes. Spoon into sterlised jam jars and seal.

mygrannyhadone

Name of present? Gingerbread hearts
Do you make it or buy it? both
Total Cost? £5
Details (the more the better) You can buy 10 gingerbread hearts from Ikea for 55p with holes for ribbons to hang them on your tree, buy a tube of icing and write messages for you're friends/family or write a sentence with one word per heart for your loved one, put in a box with some tissue paper et voila a personalised cheap and tasty xmas gift!!xx

reetyre

Name of present? 365 reasons why I love you

Do you make it or buy it? Make it

Total Cost? From £1 for materials.

DETAILS: Get a box or tupperware and decorate with old Christmas paper or shiny paper or pics of you and the person you love who is the recipient. Make a label that says "365 Reasons Why I Love You"

Cut out 365 pieces of paper and write on each one a reason that you love that person ie "you let me be my crazy self with you" and "you dont laugh at my moneysaving madness". Fold each piece of paper & put in box. Then your loved one can dip in every day to find a different reason to feel loved.

I did this for my then fiance last year, I had no problems thinking of 365 things though if you wanted to you could do 52 for 1 each week or 12 for 1 a month. He loved it, its always nice to be reminded that someone loves you and after all love doesn't have to cost!

LINK:

juliegray

Name of Present: Secret Santa
make/buy: you can buy it from any highstreet LUSH store
total cost: £5.00
details: this is an amazing little gift from a company which has brilliant 'natural' credentials. In the gift box (which is ready wrapped, so you've saved money on wrapping already coz we've done it for you) you have a chocolate santa bath bomb and 100g of our most popular soap 'Honey i Washed the Kids'. The soap alone is normally £2.50! The chocolate santa has an incredibly expensive scent made with essential oils and natural ingredients, so it's really great for people with sensitive skin or people who react to normal bath products. The soap is our year round best seller and again is brilliant for clearing up childhood exema or psoriasis. So . . . it's a great gift for children, people with sensitive skin, or just people who love baths and gorgeous smelling products which are made with natural ingredients with little or no preservatives.
Oh! and did I mention all the gift boxes in LUSH contain a 10% off voucher so you save money off your next visit to our lovely store.

when i saw this thread i just felt i had to contribute, we do great gifts and pride ourselves on giving amazing customer service (something that's hard to come by on the highstreet in my experience) so come in and be pleasantly surprised by people who genuinely love their job and know their stuff.

check it out on https://www.lush.co.uk hope that helps !!!

vix92

• Name of present?Canvas Painting
  
• Do you make it or buy it?Make it
  
• Total Cost? £5 (depending on size of canvas)
  
• Details (the more the better) I bought a a blank canvas from a shop called the Range, different sized canvases are different prices - but you can get them for as little as £3. then I got two small pots of acrylic paint (you don't need much), one dark brown, one olive coloured. Got a photo of a picture my friend liked, used a paint program on the pc to make it a bit "pop-arty" and printed it out at the same size as a the canvas, then drew an outline of the picture onto the canvas - and painted it in different shades of the two colours. Makes a unique present, and because it's done in shades of the two colours it doesn't need to be perfect - or match the photo exactly. Very personal and very cheap!
  
• Where possible please add a link if it's an online offer I bought both the paints and canvas from "The Range", they do loads of different sized canvases, and of different qualities depending on what you can afford. http://www.therange.co.uk
  

juliegray

I've just remembered another one that i sued loads when i was in uni. Go to a pound shop or the like (wilkinsons etc) and buy a large mug or cup, buy a bag of marshmallows and blag some cellophane of your local florist. Fill your mug with marshmallows and wrap in the cellophane, finish off with ribbon. I did this loads at uni and it worked out about £1.20 per person and is much cheaper than buying them ready done where they can cost over a fiver easily.

Last one is hunting thru recipe books for an all in one method recipe, something like flapjack is good. Save your big jars from your cooking cupboard throughout the year then measure out the dry ingredient and place them in your jar. Finish it off by making little tags with the recipe on and give them as gifts. Then the person you've given it to simply has to tip it out into a bowl, add the liquid, mix and bake! I've done this for kids before and they love getting a gift that they can use and then eat.

vix92

• Name of present? Home made Scarf
  
• Do you make it or buy it? Make it
  
• Total Cost? £1.98!!
  
• Details (the more the better) I bought 3 balls of funky wool from the Range, they were on offer - 3 for 2 and only 99p a ball. It's really gorgeous wool, different colours of red / orange / brown and really thick and furry, I've just knitted a scarf. It makes a lovely home made gift, so cheap, and it's easy to knit even for people who have never knitted before. They do all sorts of different wool, I've got some more to make - a black and silver sparkly one next!
  
• Where possible please add a link if it's an online offer You can get loads of wool at the The Range, or your local market is a good bet too. Or sometimes bargain shops have random balls of wool too. http://www.therange.co.uk