Cheap and Fun Gift Ideas For the Little People

I love holidays because we spend them with our family, big and small. For my husband and I, family is the most important thing, so we make our life choices based on that. When families get together you just never know what will happen, personally I like the National Lampoons Christmas turn out. Yes, it’s chatoic and a little crazy, but it is filled with laughter, love, and coming together. That is what memories will stick, not what you happened to get in the present department. Something to keep in mind.

There are a lot of families coming into the holidays with little money to spend on their kids. So I wanted to share a few ideas that might help ease the stress a little. Since the triplets are still little it tends to lean more towards younger children but you could get creative with the older ones too.

Kinder Eggs are a huge toy sensation in countries around the world (not so much in the US though). If you have never heard of them you can check out this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R91WnllMcNA  The idea is simple: Empty plastic eggs (hollow chocolate eggs if your a candy maker), tiny fun toys inside, play doh, individually wrapped fun. Some of it you may have already, most can be found at a dollor tree or toy store if you want to spend more. You put the little toys in the eggs. Cover the eggs in play doh (keep the containers though so you can resure/play with the play doh later).Wrap in colored foil/ clear wrapping paper. You can have them all seperate, wrap several together in larger boxes, or stocking stuffers. If your really tight on money, skip the play doh aspect. Below are several examples of different toys, eggs, and wrapping. You can split them up and give a few durning the Dec holidays, then a few more at birthdays, or other occasions throughout the year. So $20-30 in supplies/ toys could provide numerous gifts for multiple occassions. 

       

 

If your a good baker, you could make up little cookie bags for the stockings and if your not you can give “cookies in a Jar.” Cookies in a Jar are simple to make, fun, look beautiful, and are inexpensive to make. They are more for the parent’s/ older crowd. Start with a cookie recipe like sugar, chocolate chip, oatmeal, or paenut butter cookies. Get a large mason jar, an index card (colored ones are festive), and ribbon. Gather your ingredients and pour the dry ingredients one at a time in the masion jar so they are layered. Put the lide on tight. Fold the index card in half, and write out the recipe onto the index card. Most of the ingedients you probably already have in your cupboards, and even if you had to buy everything you could make several jars for under $25. 

Are you a creative person with some old colorful clothes around? Use them to make Sock Monkey style dolls (or other animals). There are all kinds of patterns to be found around the internet. You would have very little, if any out of pocket. Maybe the stuffing and decorative items like button eyes.

There are all sorts of ideas you can do to lower the cost of holidays like Christmas and still appease the littles. Stores like the dollar tree are great. Everything is a dollar and you can get a lot of different fun things: glow sticks, puzzles, coloring books, books, small games, an assortment of smaller toys, balloon, and so forth. Check out Goodwill, Kid’s Secondhand Stores, and so forth because sometimes you can find some really cool stuff. 

If your kids love balloons, get a pack and fill up a huge box with them and wrap it. Keep in mind, smaller kids tend to be more excited about the experience (and wrapping paper) then they are about the toys themselves. This is the first year our triplets have actually told us what they really wanted Santa to bring, and they are almost 5 years old.

If any of my readers have fun, cheap gift ideas please share them 🙂  I love to see what other people come up with.

Our family wishes all of you a wonderful and safe Holiday Season! Make some lasting memories!