My MSE Christmas gift ideas

katerinasol

Hi all!After the inital panic about having ALMOST NO MONEY this Christmas, these are the ideas I have come up with for the family.

Mum and MIL:
Hampers - buy wicker baskets from Ebay/somewhere cheap, line them with hay from pet shops, fill them up with books from charity shops, DVDs from charity shops or independent film shops, maybe a CD, cookies (bake them ourselves) and some smellies from Wilko.

Dad and FIL:
They're both big tea drinkers (I've never met a man that isn't??) so I was thinking of going to Whittard & Chelsea or somewhere like that and buying them a couple of packs of fancy tea. Though they're both fairly suspicious of 'new' stuff, so will probably be sticking to black tea.

OH's sister:
Book on web design from Amazon

My sister:
I was thinking of either making her something like jewellery (she's 13) or making her an IOU Big Sister chequebook, with things like 'blow-dry and style hair', 'take out for lunch', 'show age-inappropriate film' and things like that. I'm quite handy with the computer so I'm pretty sure I could make this myself and decorate the front cover with bits from Hobbycraft. What do you all think of this? Is this a viable 'cheap' idea?

Murtle

What great ideas, and can be as cheap or as expensive as you want the items to be.

A couple of thoughts, if you have a shredder you could use that paper instead of buying hay (save a few pennies).

You could maybe put a few cookies in with the tea hamper...tea and cookies yum yum! You could have a look in the the supermarket for teas as well, they have such a wide range now, or look for a nice tin (charity shops) and put the tea bags in there.

You could maybe give her the jewellery items to make herself, like a kit (that you'd normal pay loads for). Or the vouchers are a great idea too!

Well done!

katerinasol

Murtle wrote: »

What great ideas, and can be as cheap or as expensive as you want the items to be.

A couple of thoughts, if you have a shredder you could use that paper instead of buying hay (save a few pennies).

You could maybe put a few cookies in with the tea hamper...tea and cookies yum yum! You could have a look in the the supermarket for teas as well, they have such a wide range now, or look for a nice tin (charity shops) and put the tea bags in there.

You could maybe give her the jewellery items to make herself, like a kit (that you'd normal pay loads for). Or the vouchers are a great idea too!

Well done!

Cookies in the tea hamper are definitely a great idea! I was also thinking of sticking a mini bottle of sparkling wine in with the mothers' hampers. And using shredder paper is great too - I can get rid of all the credit card bills (mwahahaha!)

jeningers

Just a thought - you talk about putting sparkling wine in teh hampers. Last wee in Tescos I picked up big bottles of bucks fizz for £1 maybe that would do (and will bulk it out cheaply!)

katerinasol

Ooh thank you, that's definitely a great idea! I'm sure they would appreciate big bottles a lot more than small ones

SugarSpun

You can get gunpowder tea quite cheaply in Chinese supermarkets, that might be fun for the tea hampers.

Kitchenbunny

Love the idea of a big sister IOU chequebook - that's really cool. Another one to add could be:

how to do a couple of different make-up looks like minimalist or cats-eye eyeliner
Buy her an age appropriate magazine if she shows an interest in something
A voucher for a "make a piece of jewellery of her choice" - a complete custom "designer" one-off! You could show her the colours and styles you have and let her pick what she wants - it can then be custom-made to what she would like.

Hope these ideas help and that the gifts are a big success.

KB xx

sarah*a

Love your ideas

Wicker baskets can be hideously expensive - what about a large cardboard box and you can glam it up with some sparkly wrapping paper?

Poundland do lots of crafty bits too - save you shelling out £££ at Hobbycraft.

Murtle

katerinasol wrote: »

Cookies in the tea hamper are definitely a great idea! I was also thinking of sticking a mini bottle of sparkling wine in with the mothers' hampers. And using shredder paper is great too - I can get rid of all the credit card bills (mwahahaha!)

Sparkling wine would be nice, or any wine I'm sure would be appreciated. Check the prices though, as sometimes larger bottles are cheaper than the small bottles (or very close in price)

xxx

Xaniwoop

I've noticed our local B&M have some nice looking teas in tins going cheap, hope that helps.

katerinasol

Sorry to drag this back up, but on the subject of wicker baskets I saw this on Ebay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/180734676538?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

It's a wicker basket kit, comes with a basket, cellophane wrapping and a bow to stick on it, only £2.45! Ordered it last night and it was dispatched this morning, if anyone is interested I will let you all know how it turned out.
I bought some pampering stuff for the mums from Body Shop as well, they're doing 40% off with a voucher code at the moment so that worked out quite nicely!