Day # 17 - Simple and Personal Christmas Gift Idea

I am trying to cut back on Christmas gift expenses this year simply because overspending for gifts seems ridiculous to me. Simple and personal are my gift goals this year.

One of the best gifts my Mom ever gave me was a recipe book with her family recipes written in her handwriting. I love that book! I cherish that book! My daughter's-in-love will not receive that book! They can fight over it after I am dead! Sorry, I am getting off topic. Anyway, this is what I am doing this year for several women in my family.

First I went on a search through Hobby Lobby and found this little photo album. It holds 4" x 6" photos or in this case 4" x 6" recipe cards. It was on the markdown aisle for $1.99 and they had it in a variety of colors. I bought a few.

Next I bought a pack of card-stock paper for $3.99. It has 50 sheets in pastel colors. You can get brights colors, neutral colors, etc. The most important thing here is to put your blinders on when walking down the paper aisle. You can easily get sucked into the scrapbooking vortex with all the beautiful scrapbook accessories and spend more money. The purpose is to save money, so determine beforehand not to look!

Next, pick out several of your best recipes. Although the album will hold twenty-four, I only picked twelve of my recipes. Some are holiday favorites, some are everyday recipes. Type them up, add personal comments, add some clip-art, print them onto the card-stock paper, cut them and slip into the album. Be sure to save them and you will have them available for later if you need a quick gift idea.

This alone would make a cute gift to a friend, niece, teacher, co-worker or your local librarian :) But if you want to add a bit more, you can pick up a spatula, whisk, or other kitchen gadget (really cute ones at Target), or maybe a kitchen towel, etc. and you have a simple personal gift for less than $15.00, maybe $10.00 if you catch a bargain. Because I am an obsessive compulsive over achiever, I did make an apron to go with the gift, but I still have less than $20.00 involved.

There, I've prepared a nice gift that involved my personal effort and also personalized it to the individual. It worked for me!

Check our more "Works for Me Wednesday" ideas at "Rocks In My Dryer." Thank you Shannon for making this link available. It is a nice resource in the blogosphere!

Thanks for reading, Rosie.