Well at least that's usually how it goes in our house every November through December. Despite me buying Christmas gifts early (seriously I start over the summer) somehow we always spend more than I intended. This year I tried to be a little smarter and I decided that for some of my colleagues I would try a make-at-home gift. The nice thing about this is that even though you don't spend as much, the gift hopefully means a little more because you put some time and thought into it. So this year I made Lemon Sugar body scrub and Caramel Cheesecake dip.
I got the basis for the scrub from here. Now I don't know how she got her scrub to be bright yellow like that. Maybe it was because she used olive oil as her base. I had a whole big container of coconut oil already on hand and I've read how amazing coconut oil is for your skin so I used that as my base. It is in solid form in the container so I scooped out roughly a cup and nuked it in the microwave for 30 sec. to liquify it. Then I added my sugar and lemon juice and mixed it up. I ended up adding a little more sugar than the recipe called for because I didn't want the scrub to be liquidy. Then I scooped it into these cute jars I got at Hobby Lobby (50% off!) and tied a cute ribbon around them. I printed out a label at school that listed what it was and what the ingredients are. I do think next time I will add a few drops of essential oil to make it more scented. Maybe lavender....
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Coconut oil: $6.99 (and I barely used half the container for 4 large jars of scrub)
4 glass jars: (4X $1.14) $4.56
Lemon juice: free as we already had some
Sugar: approx $2-$3. (I don't remember how much a 5 lb bag of sugar costs at Aldi's but it's not much)
Ribbon: free (leftover from different project)
And then I also made a caramel cheesecake dip which I found here. Now I didn't do the graham cracker crumbs because I couldn't think of a cute way to package them with the dip and the apple.
I found 2 small jars at Hobby Lobby (again 50% off!) and bought some holiday cellophane treat bags. I put the dip in the jars, placed that at the bottom of the bag, placed a granny smith apple on top and tied it shut with a ribbon. And of course I put a label on the outside of the bag so that my recipients would know what it was. The bonus part was I had leftover dip since I only made 2 jars worth.
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Low fat cream cheese: $1.39 (I feel strongly this is the price of cream cheese at Aldi's; we buy it a lot)
Caramel sauce: $2-$3 (can't remember what it was at Aldi's)
Cellophane treat bags: $1.00 for 20 of them
Ribbon: free (already had some)
So there you have 2 cheap but thoughtful gifts perfect for Christmas or whenever. If you're looking for more ideas like this, just search on Pinterest: there are more than you can imagine. :)
