Festive Fivers Competition: The best Xmas pressies for under £5

judegrace_2

Name of present? A dash, a pinch and a smidgen: mini measuring spoons for the chef who has everything. Even great for those who don't cook but like the idea!
Do you make it or buy it? buy it
Total Cost: definitely under £5. Possibly under £2 depending on the shop you find it in
Details : We've seen these in a few kitchen/cook shops, but have a look around as prices vary. They usually hang in a little bag in the gadgets section. We've given them as pressies a few times and the recipients are always tickled pink.
Best price we have found yet was at Kitchen to Table at the Junction 32 Retail Park Castleford (Pontefract) 01977 667715

Patricia_visiblevoice

• Name of present: Fashion Purchase Organiser
  
• Do you make it or buy it? A combination
  
• Total Cost? £2-4
  
• Details: Buy a pocketsized photograph album from any stationers or photo processors - the type with plastic wallets for slipping individual prints into. Each page/wallet becomes a place to store receipts in order of purchase, labels, care instructions and spare buttons/thread for your purchase.
• Also invaluable if you want to sell anything on at a later date as such details add value and authenticity to your ebay photos, etc.
• If you want to make it even nicer, make and print off a personalised backing sheet for each page, so that any friend with a short memory or a serious high street habit can write further details of each item as they slip them in.
• Can also be used for other purchases and a larger size A4 one makes an excellent place to store instruction sheets and guarantees.

catherhk

Name of present?

1) Gorgeous homemade chocs in 4 gorgeous ornamental glasses (see link 1 at bottom)
2) Designer style Boots!!!!!!
3) Girly fashion gifts with or without homemade chocs (ballet pumps, satin pants, puffball skirts, chunky rings etc...)

Do you make it or buy it?
The only thing you have to make is chocolates. Everything is bought at Tesco (:money: gain points too!) or asos.com

Total Cost?
1) gorgeous chocs in ornamental glasses £4.79 (not inc the clingfilm but does inc price of ISIG ribbon)
2) Designer style boots: £3-5 (not inc P&P unfortunatly- £3.75)
3) girly gifts: £3-5, if you do 4 presents at the same time you can afford to give 2 truffles each. Bare in mind asos.com P&P is £3.75 per order

Details (the more the better)
1) Ikea's ISIG tealight holders are really gorgeous, they cost £1.49 for 4.
You fill each tealight with homemade truffle (which are actually nicer than bought chocs), then wrap them in newspaper and tie a ribbon around all 4 holders (buy Ikeas ISIG ribbon for £0.49). The gift looks AMAAAAAAAZing. I wish I had a pic to show but I'm making them next week!
And because you've lined the tealight with clingfilm the choc just pops out and then your friend can re-use the 4 tealight holders, which are beautiful

2) totally on trend shoes (see link 2). I was going to show you some designer boots that were on sale but in the time I've been writing this they sold out! So get to the site for really amazing shoes for your gal pals!

3) This website has brilliantly fashionable little bits! Check out the swallow necklace! And the chunky ring! Select the option 'lowest to highest price' and you'll get some amazing stuff.


Other Wrapping ideas: I believe the secret of a really good present is in the wrapping. Buy brown package paper (£2 for 2 rols from Post Office) and tie it up with string! I think white works best w/ the brown. Also, you could get a chinese language newspaper and wrap really carefully so the lines all look really straight- it looks mega cool!

Chocolate truffle recipe:
2 bars tesco dark chocolate (2 for £1.40)
1oz butter (tescos own £0.89)
1oz double cream (tescos is £0.56 for 150 ml)
melt 2/3rds of one of the bars of choc and stir the cream and butter in.
leave in the fridge over night
When the mixture is solid, roll it into 4 little balls- make sure they're quite a bit smaller than the tealights
Tealights recipe:
line the inside of each tealight with clingfilm
melt the remaining choc and pour a small amount into each lined tealight
put the little ball of choc/cream/butter mix on top of the melted choc
then pour the remaining choc into each tealight and refrigerate
Normal recipe:
Roll the balls in melted chocolate to completely cover
place on a clingfilm lined plate and refrigerate


Where possible please add a link if it's an online offer
Link 1- Ikea tealights (also see recipe):
http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/60118563
Link 2- Shoes:
http://www.asos.com/Woman/Clearance/Shoes/Cat/pgecategory.aspx?cid=1931&pge=0&pgesize=20&sort=3&sh=0
Link 3- Girly gifts (also see recipe):
http://www.asos.com/Woman/Clearance/5-And-Under/Cat/pgecategory.aspx?cid=2793

cinnamonbone

• Name of present? Money Saving Expertise
• Do you make it or buy it? Make it
• Total Cost? £0 only time
• Details (the more the better)
• Anyone that is reading/replying to these forum messages, must have a certain knowledge of how to Save Money and if like me a firey desire to find the best deal. Unfortuantley, there are people out there who do not have a clue and wonder through life with their hard earned cash just washing away down the drains. Therefore I feel one of the best presents you could give to people like this, is your time, energy and expertise. Spend a day or two going through their bills with them, help them change their Gas/Electricity/Telephone/Broadband/Mortgage/Creditcards etc. You can give as much or as little help as you feel able and the saving implications would be endless. A friend is for life so give them a present that will help them forever. :beer:

Russ_Wall

• Name of present? Free Audio Book on CD
• Do you make it or buy it? Download it
• Total Cost? £1 for CDs
• Details (the more the better) I send Christmas cards to my friend's children, and I like to add a gift so I usually download a free Children's Audio book, save it onto a CD and add a festive CD label that is personalised to them. The children love it and it is easy and light to post. The best audio book I can find is Rockford's Rock Opera a wonderful musical about extinct creatures, featuring the voice of Steve Punt (suitable for all ages). I have downloaded part 1 and part 2 onto two CDs which is about 1.5 hours of entertainment. (There are more chapters online). My children love this story and already know all the songs, we listen to it in the car. A simple gift that's quick to make. I know it's an uplifting story the whole family can enjoy at Christmas.
  
• Where possible please add a link if it's an online offer;www.rockfordsrockopera.com

smousie

• Name of present? Crisp wrapper handbag
• Do you make it or buy it? Made it
• Total Cost? crisp bags were free (not including the cost of the crisps, less than £1 for zipper and other bits
• Details (the more the better)

See http://www.candywrapperpurse.blogspot.com/ for details of how to make a handbag out of crisp bags. I cut a piece of paper (from a magazine page) and folded it inside each bit of crisp bag for extra strength. Dental floss is really strong and is ideal for stitching the whole bag together.

Here are some examples of these sort of bags available on a commercial website:
http://www.uncommongoods.com/item/item.jsp?source=family&itemId=15365
http://www.uncommongoods.com/item/item.jsp?source=family&itemId=15369

Michele37

• Name of present? Personalised CD/DVD
  
• Do you make it or buy it? Make it
• Total Cost? 6p Price of blank cd or dvd
  
• Details (the more the better) I know this is an old one but I always think this is such a good pressie, from the heart,
  
• I did one of these for my hubby a few years back for valentines day, I put all our tunes on a cd Songs that reminded me of him and our family, Like our wedding songs etc, you could also put photos on a dvd and use a free computer programme and put together a montage, like old school photos, baby pics etc and you can add different tunes to them nowadays with all this ace technology, We still have our cds and play them when we need cheering up, nothing like nice memories to make you feel better and it lasts longer that a cruddy selection box, you can make the jewel case personal too.

Michele x

breaksbassbleeps

• Name of present? Iced Gem ring
• Do you make it or buy it? Buy it
• Total Cost? £4.00
• Details (the more the better) This site sells a huge range of varied jewelery based on many popular biscuits ranging from Iced gems, Custard creams, Bourbons and Jammie Dodgers. Ideal for all the biscuit lovers out there. Go to http://www.biscuitboutique.co.uk and get 10% off all orders (before postage) with the code "b1scu1t" at the checkout. :j

darthling

• Wooden toys for babies
  
• to buy
  
• Total Cost? £4.10 or 5.60
  
• I found these cute little toys at www.byegeorgie.com. The smallest cars are £4.10 and delivery is £1.50. My son had some of these from our friends in Germany and he loves them so I've ordered some of the cars and tractors for my nephew for Christmas.
  
• There is an offer that I found www.byegeorgie.com/offer.pdf but it's very limited.
  

bluelotus

Name of present? Freebie Presents for Xmas!
Do you make it or buy it? Costs nothing but time.
Total Cost? £0 only time
Details (the more the better)
This may take a few weeks to rack up the points needed (or if you want to really reap the rewards start now for next Xmas!) - all you need to do is join ipoints.co.uk, Lightspeed or Toluna (formerly Test and Vote) and be rewarded for shopping, opinions and questionaires etc. When you receive your points, exchange them for goodies or e-vouchers and voila! free presents!! (ipoints do a huge range of books, cds, dvds, magazine subs, gifts etc)

I have got five people on my Xmas list really nice gifts so far from exchanging my reward points and am still waiting for another e-voucher of £16 to use at HMV - my daughter is in for a few dvds!

Give it a whirl - if you are shopping you may as well be rewarded for it!

Good luck and Happy Xmas!
http://ipoints.co.uk/
http://www.toluna.com/
http://gb.lightspeedpanel.com/index.html