The College Money Network is helping you celebrate the holiday season with a giveaway! As the economy continues to struggle, many of us are cutting back on our holiday spending this year, but we still want to have just as much fun. Share your frugal holiday ideas (frugal holiday gifts, frugal holiday party plans, etc.) and earn opportunties to win an iPod Shuffle, Amazon.com gift certificate, and more just in time for the holidays.
Prizes
- 2 GB iPod Shuffle
- $50 Photofiddle.com Gift Certificate
- $25 Amazon.com
Gift Certificate
- One-year magazine subscriptions
- A copy of The Millionaire Next Door
How to Enter
There are multiple ways to earn entries into the CMN Frugal Holiday Giveaway. Complete as many as you can to increase your chances of winning a prize! You may enter each way once.
- Leave a comment on this post sharing your frugal holiday ideas. (1 entry)
- Subscribe to my feed via RSS [?] or email. Then send me the secret phrase that appears at the end of each post in my feed. (2 entries)
- Write a post on your own blog about your frugal holiday ideas and link back to this post. Email me to let me know. (3 entries)
- Visit individual College Money Network member sites for opportunities to earn additional entries, e.g. subscribing to individual RSS feeds. Copying and pasting your comment on multiple blogs will NOT count. (Maximum of 6 extra entries)
How To Win
All valid entries will be assigned a unique number. We will use a random number generator to select the winning numbers. Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received.
All entries must be received by December 15, 2008 at 11:59 PM PST.
Winners will be notified the following day. After all the prizes have been claimed, we will release an official announcement listing the winners.
Rules and Restrictions
- All winners must be 18 years of age or older and live in the United States.
- No purchase is necessary to participate in this giveaway.
- We will choose the winners from the qualified participants. We are the sole judges of adding entries to the list. Plagiarized content, trackback from splogs, spam, and comments containing abusive or inappropriate languages will not be considered.
- To award the prizes, we must be able to contact you. Please leave a valid email address with your comment, or make sure we can contact you through your web site. Your contact information will not be shared with anyone else.
- For certain prizes, winners will be required to submit a physical address to ship the prize. Again, your contact information will never be shared with anyone.
- Prizes are provided as-is, and substitutions may be made at our discretion.
- Winners must reply within 1 week from the time we notify them to claim their prize. Otherwise, they forfeit their prize, and it will be awarded to an alternate.
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Decorate your house using only the stuff you have in the house. Granted, everyone thinks of the paper snowflakes and whatnot, but by thinking outside the box you can come up with some really fun stuff. For instance, if you have paint in the house you can paint holiday scenes on your windows. Just add a couple of drops of soap to the paint so that it washes off easily when you’re sick of it. Don’t have paint? make your own. This recipe for paint using flour and water ( from http://www.angelfire.com/dc/childsplay/craftrecipes4.htm) would work well for reverse snowflakes on windows:
1 c. all-purpose flour, 1 c. cold water, 3 c. cold water. In a large saucepan mix flour and 1 c cold water; stir until smooth. Add 3 c. water. Cook over medium heat, stirring until mixture thickens and bubbles. reduce heat and simmer 1 minute while stirring. Divide and color with food coloring if you’d like (I have no clue what it’d do to the windows, so I wouldn’t) and cover and cool. Then paint over paper snowflake held up to window and remove paper once the paint dries slightly, leaving the image of the snowflake outlined in a white cloud.
Other ideas: Tree made from boxes and coat wire, wrapping paper from butcher paper and paint and potato-carved stamps, plastic container snowman.
This is one my mom taught me. Instead of buying expensive wrapping paper or paying someone in store to wrap an item, use old newspapers to wrap presents. If all you are doing is giving it to a family member, who cares what it looks like. The wrapping comes off anyways, and it costs nothing to do.
This year we are going very frugal…since our income is very limited we will not be putting a tree up this year (talk about a heart ache)…our kids understand that if we want to have a few gifts under the tree we will have to do without the tree…we are still decorating the rest of the house as much as we can. We’ve made our own ornaments to decorate the windows and will be hanging our stockings up on the wall so that Santa knows where to place the stuffers at, but no tree. I’ve assured the kids that it will get better but that Santa still knows where we live regardless of whether or not we have a tree. We will also still be making home-made cookies and leaving egg nog for santa too…
Happy Holidays; Merry Christmas to all!!!!
To make amazing, inexpensive, personalized gifts, all you need is jewelry wire and alphabet beads. Wrapping the wire and beads to spell names or phrases, you can make a unique gift out of toothbrushes, pens, spoons,lip glosses,lighters or anything!!
quitecontrary1977@hotmail.com
My family gets together in Atlanta (home of my sister and her family) for Christmas. Since I end up flying, transporting gifts can get tricky (especially toys for my two young nephews). I end up doing a lot of shopping online and having the items shipped to my sister’s place in my name. I send her an email letting her know what’s coming and she emails me back when a box arrives (including the name on the return address so I can keep track of what’s there and what’s not yet). My mom has started doing this too. So, when we arrive, there’s always a pile of boxes in the guest room for each of us.
I love stocking stuffers, have my received lavish ones my since I was kid. But this year instead of spending our usual $100 on each stocking, we are having a Dollar Store challenge. Who can buy the best stocking stuffers for $15 only at the Dollar Store? Since there are 3 of us, we are saving $255 this year.
In the past, I’ve made a family recipe cookbook, cat-food can backpacking stoves, a frame of pictures of my husband with his dog as she grew from puppy to full-size, and cookie mix in a jar.
I’m also a photographer, so framed enlargements (for family members and people I know would like them) make personal but not too expensive gifts. I like to use the frames you can get from Target that already have a matboard with them. They look really nice without costing a lot.
This year, I kept costs down by using credit card reward points to get gift cards and also taking all my change to a coin sorting machine where they can turn the balance into a “gift card” (actually a redemption receipt, but same difference). I also uploaded some of my photographs to make personalized photo gifts and used online coupons to save some money.
A limited budget this year is yielding several fruit and nut baskets for under $50!
Look on EBay for gifts that you need to buy, many times you can find them on there at a significantly cheaper price. People at this time of the year are looking to make money to buy gifts so who knows… maybe you can find an even better deal. Craigslist as well is a good time.
I have been frugal from birth thanks to my parents. We have been saving and recycling wrapping paper, bows, boxes and gift bags for years (we unwrap very carefully!). This year we are not going to put up lights, which should save on the electric bill. I made a wreath for our red front door, and have it lit with a tiny spotlight. A note to Barbara…late on Christmas eve some of the tree sellers will put the trees out to the curb for pick up, (in our town they are recycled into mulch) and you might be able to find one.
This year, my husband and I simply cannot afford to buy gifts, so we are inviting people over to our place to cook them a big dinner instead. We were planning on feeding ourselves that day (!), so we decided to ask them over too. We are selling old gift cards that we have no use for on Craigslist to pick up some extra cash for the food, which is working out quite nicely. Also, we’ve been trying not to use our heater to save on the bills so that when Christmas comes and we have people over, we can make it nice and comfy for them.
We have been thrifty this year from decorations to presents…made most, bartered and traded for other presents…as far as decorations…all handmade this year even the tree…how you ask…I saved all my children’s drawing and such and we cut there handprints out of them by tracing their hands on them…then we designed them into a tree…decorated it an angel on top made of constructino paper…we made popcorn garland and such and tacked it up there too…totally frugal and my children are super duper proud of it!!!
lilhottemomma@yahoo.com
I usually just write poems for the people I care about. It’s free and it’s something I can do. This is how I’m able to give a unique gift that people will cherish without paying a cent.
bake dessert presents! I literally have to buy NOTHING because I already have all the ingredients, it’s just a gift of time really.
I like the idea of drawing names and limiting gifts to just one person in your family. That takes the pressure off and helps keep the focus on the true meaning of Christmas. Time with family is more important anyway. Oh course, you can’t get away with doing this with the kids, so make sure they all get something from everyone.
My first frugal idea helps not-for-profits be a bit frugal. I buy gifts from organizations like Chicago Children’s Memorial Hospital. It helps raise money for a good cause and I get Christmas presents for my family and friends. I pay cash whenever I can. Credit card companies take a cut from each transaction. I am gonna be visiting the Art Institute on Thursday (free Thursdays yay!) and I’ll stop by Children’s Memorial to buy gifts.
I can sum up my second idea in two words. Synthetic Christmas tree.
–mark–
Let your kids decorate your tree using a toilet paper roll and construction paper to make a topper. Different types of colored noodles for garland, and other foods to make cute ornaments. Use candles you already have for centerpieces and throw a few christmas ornaments you have lying around on a platter to make cute and inexpensive table centerpieces. Hope these help.
We have minimized the number of people we are giving gifts to this year. We used to basically exchange gift cards with siblings – this year, we’re not exchanging. Set up some together-time with girlfriends instead of exchanging.
I’ve had the same tree for 3 years now, and I just trot it out and display it every year instead of getting something new.
AAlso, instead of trying to get all of your Christmas ornaments to match, get people to buy you some as presents. My parents’ Christmas ornaments are a jumble of our old craft projects and trinkets celebrating our first Christmas and random other ones. We add to them over the years with a trolley from when Chad and I went to San Francisco for the first time. Every ornament has a story, and even though we often run out of room on the tree for our entire family history, we make sure to fit everything on there!
My frugal tip for x-mas is to use some “green” decorations. Using pinecones for decorations is a great idea. You can use them as centerpieces or ornaments. Painting them for more variety. Get pine branches from the x-mas tree place. Some will let you have them free. You can create your own wreath or actually place the branches on the mantle or use for centerpieces. You will save a lot, your house will smell dreamy and it looks festive.
Look around and see what little, unused gifts you might have lying around–coffee gifcards for small amounts, gloves, lotions– and make a cute gift basket.