Christmas is wonderful, but I always breath a sigh of relief once the holiday is over. It's such a busy time getting ready for all of the church and family events.......and preparing gifts.
You know that I made the drawstring backpacks for everyone on my list. Everyone was 26 people both children and adults. I needed a new bag, so gifted one to myself too. I made so many that I have 9 left to list for sale in my etsy shop.
The beauty of making the bags was that I had a lot of time (and love) put into the sewing, but very little money. Most of the fabrics were given to me and a small amount of the fabric I bought at yard sales or estate sales for very little money. It proved to be a great stash buster of my fabric as well although there is still plenty in my craft room.
I didn't think to take a picture, but I got a great deal on the candy that I put in everyone's bags too.
I used shopkick while I waited at Walmart to get the oil changed on my car. With the few points I already had in the app and what I got while waiting I ended up being able to get $7 in Target gift cards.
This prompted me to know that I needed to buy my candy at Target. I went to work and printed coupons for some of the candy---from Swagbucks and Inboxdollars so I will earn an additional 10 cents for each coupon that I printed and used----I used 2 coupons.
I put the Target Cartwheel app back on my phone and found additional percentage off on the candy I planned to buy.
Then, when I arrived at Target I found a one day special that day of an additional 25% off all candy!!
I ended up with over $30 worth of candy and paid less than $10 for it.
For people such as my brother, sister-in-law, niece, nephew, children's significant others etc, I came up with the idea to make up little desk gift sets for each of them.
I shopped Dollar Tree and bought index cards, small notebooks, pencils, and pens. I spent $8 plus tax.
I used paper clips from home and bookmarks that I already had made and added those along with index cards, a pencil, a pen and a small notepad into a cellophane bag.
Other gifts for my children and grandchildren came out of my stash that I gathered all year long.
As for shopping after Christmas, I only hit Dollar Tree to see what I could get for 50 cents each. I spent less than $10 but came home with gift boxes of all sorts. Boxes is what I was short on this year for wrapping.
How was your Christmas? What did you do to make it a frugal one?
