Saving Money on Holiday Gifts

Gifts!  Not only do you have to buy them, but you have to wrap them and some you might have to put in the mail.  This can get expensive!  So here are some tips for saving on your gifts…
Wrapping them:
Do you have children in the house?  For smaller gifts, let them color Holiday coloring book pictures, and then you can wrap the gifts in their colored artwork.  This makes the wrapping paper more special because they did it.  If you have larger gifts that need to be wrapped, you can purchase rolls of white newspaper paper.  Cut the amount you need and let your family/children decorate the wrapping paper with their own artwork.
Smaller gifts can also be put in gift bags…only these gift bags are regular brown bag lunch bags.  You can find “brown” bags in a variety of colors…you can get some white bags and decorate them like you would the white wrapping paper.  Or glue the fronts of Christmas Cards to the bags…
Instead of bows, why not tape a candy cane to the front of your packages
Using old Christmas cards again, make name tags for the presents.  Using a cookie cutter, you can trace different shapes on the cards and cut them out.

Those small scraps of wrapping paper also make great tags.  Cut them out in shapes, or cut them into a rectangle and fold them over.  Put “to” and “from” and there you go…
If you are using white boxes, why not wrap your presents in the decorative tissue paper they have now.  You can buy a pack of them cheaper than wrapping paper.  And if you have colored boxes or brown boxes, why not put a sheet of white tissue paper on first and then wrap with the decorative tissue paper.
Are you giving someone a gift you can wrap something else in?  Like using a scarf to wrap up CD’s or DVD’s or socks that you can put perfume in?  You can always tie the socks shut with pretty ribbon.

And how can you save on mailing packages?
Mail early.  The earlier you put your gifts in the mail the better.
If you are buying a gift from well-known places such as: Wal-mart or Amazon.com, why not have them mail the package right to the person.  You can check with their site and let them know this is a gift, so they don’t put a packing slip with the prices inside the box.  They might not be ‘wrapped’ in a traditional wrapping paper, but it’s the gift that counts.