If you are like me, you love giving baked goods and candies for gifts through out the Holiday Season. I have found a great way to give my cookies and not pay a fortune for a new plate. Visit garage sales, your local Goodwill, or Salvation Army. You can pick large plates for next to nothing. I bought some beautiful Christmas plates at Goodwill two years ago for cookie giving. I came home and got to looking on line for them. They were selling for $56.00 a plate. I paid a total of $2.82 with my senior discount. And this was for 8 plates. I loved them so much that I kept them and used them with my mugs which were almost the same pattern. This is the time of year I love checking out Goodwill and Salvation Army Stores.
I also am on the look out for old glass canning jars. Fill with homemade potpourri. Then tie on a pretty lace or crochet doily. The scent fills your house with delicious smells and these will make great gifts for family and friend.
I have over the years done a lot of gift baskets. They are enjoyed by everyone I have ever given them to. Theme your basket to the person you are giving them to. If they love cooking Italian foods add a strainer, boxes or bags of pasta, a jar or two of pasta sauce, a nice bottle of wine, bottle of Italian dressing, some Italian bread sticks and top it off with biscotti and a nice bottle or two of frothy cappuccino mix.
My parents liked different coffees so I did baskets for them with several individual fancy ground coffees. Each package made a pot of coffee. Add a couple pretty mugs, a plate of homemade cookies and I always tucked in a pretty tea towel trimmed for the Holiday Season. For both my sisters who had 2 at home yet I added 4 mugs instead of 2 and added special flavor packets of hot chocolate mix for the boys.
There are so many different possibilities with a basket of goodies. Golf items for the golfer, beauty and bath goodies for the teen girl, bath toys and bath goodies for the small child, for the gardener, garden gloves, trowel and other small garden tools, seeds and a subscription to a gardening magazine.
A very easy way to wrap your gifts if you have many to do for each person is by using different wrapping paper for each child or person. This has helped me over the years in keeping track of how many gifts I have for each of the grandchildren. I would do one in red paper, one in green, one in gold, one in silver.
I hope that at least one of these tips will be helpful to you during the next few months.
Have a great week end.
