No bills or frills, just lots of thrills. Advice from siblings on a budget.
Dec 23 '00
I am writing this editorial with the help of my little brother Chris. Neither of us have very much money to spend on Christmas gifts this year. After all, Chris is only eleven with an annual income of about $100 and I am a freelance writer/substitute schoolteacher who is saving money for my upcoming wedding and (hopefully) law school.
As we type here tonight, besides the beautiful Christmas tree grown and cut on my parents’ farm, we thought we would share with you some of the gifts already lying wrapped under the tree. These gifts, although not expensive monetarily, are rich in sentiment and love.
For MOM and DAD, love Caurie Anne
For our parents I made very cheap gifts, which will provide them with hours of pleasure and lots of memories of days gone by: audio compact discs (CDs). I made my mom three CD’s of Beatles songs (about 70 songs in all) and my dad a CD of classic rock (Credence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Led Zeppelin, Cheap Trick, The Romantics, etc.) and two CDs of Christmas songs from various artists (Jewel, The Beach Boys, Burl Ives, Nat King Cole, The Vienna Boys Choir, etc.) I was able to make all of these CDs for less then $5.00 and only a few hours of work. I did this by buying inexpensive blank CDs and jewel cases from Wal*Mart and downloading the songs off of Napster. I then recorded the songs onto the blank CDs on a CD burner in my computer.
Yes, in order to make these gifts I did have to have a CD burner in my computer (about $200), but if you don’t you could always borrow someone’s computer who does (try a college kid!) CDs you make yourself are not only really cheap (for example, if I bought all those CDs they would have cost over $100 – half the price of CD burner itself), they are also unique, special, and easily tailored to your receiver’s musical tastes.
For MOM and DAD, love Chris
For my parents Chris had about $10 to spend on both of them. He earned this money working on the farm selling Christmas trees and gathering brush for wreaths. Chris is a very smart eleven year old when it comes to money and knows that very special gifts are not always found at the mall. His favorite place to do any Christmas or birthday shopping is antique stores. With the help of a ride from our sister Steph, Chris went to a local antique store in our rural town and picked out two very cool gifts for my parents he could not get elsewhere. For my Dad he got an antique Coca Cola tin for about $5. My Dad loves Coca Cola and antiques, therefore we know he will love this gift. Chris went the extra mile and filled the tin with a special picture he drew of he and my Dad playing baseball.
For our Mom, Chris bought an antique salt and pepper shaker set in the shape of citrus fruits. The antique dealer said they were probably about forty years old and sold them to Chris for $5. Chris decided on this gift because he wanted something special for my mom that would be useful in the kitchen (my mom likes to cook). Yes, he could have gotten her cheap salt and pepper shakers at Kmart, but what other mommy on our road will be able to pepper her eggs on Christmas morning with an “orange?”
FOR Putt, love Caurie Anne
Inexpensive does not mean impersonal, something evident in the “cheap” gift I am giving my beloved fiancé Putt. For Putt I used a CD Rom made by Hallmark to make a personalized twelve month calendar. The program allowed me to mark special occasions on the calendar with personal notes, such as, “July 7: Our wedding!!!!!” Also, because I have a scanner, I was able to scan photographs of us onto the calendar to make it even more unique. The calendar is beautiful and something I could never buy at a store! Yes, some places (like Kinkos or Wal*Mart) will make such calendars for you if you bring in twelve photographs, but they also cost about $30 each and you can only mark ten days with special inscriptions. The calendar I made Putt has at least thirty inscriptions unique to us and cost nothing except a bit of time and paper. Again, I did have the technology that made such a cheap gift possible, but such a calendar can also be easily handmade.
FOR Putt, love Chris
My fiancé is a major hockey fan and Chris, with all the innocent good intentions of an eleven year old, decided he wanted to get him tickets to a Buffalo Sabre’s game. However, when he went onto Ebay to check out the price of game tickets, he realized his $5 bid just wouldn’t cut it. Therefore, Chris decided to literally “cut” Putty’s gift. Armed with piles of my Dad’s old Sports Illustrated magazines and his own Sports Illustrated for Kid’s Chris made Putty a huge collage of hockey players glued onto a poster board.
He also bought several hockey cards from a dealer on Ebay of Putty’s favorite hockey player (Geoff Sanderson—formerly of the Buffalo Sabres, currently of the Columbus Blue Jackets) All of the cards (about 15 in all) cost $3.00 (with shipping). Chris can’t wait to give Putty this awesome collage (which he framed with a $1 frame from the Dollar Store) on Christmas morning. Knowing my fiancé, he will love the gift even more then tickets to a Sabres vs. Maple Leafs game.
Well, those are just a few “cheap” gifts lying under our Christmas tree tonight. Chris and I hope that maybe they will give you a few ideas for your future gift giving events, and, if nothing else, remind you that the most important part of the Christmas season is not how much you spend, but how much you give.
Chris and I wish you a wonderful holiday season!!!!
Love it or hate it, please just rate it!
~caurieanne
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Epinions.com ID:
caurieanne
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Location: Upstate New York
Reviews written: 30
Trusted by: 26 members
About Me:
I am a native upstate New Yorker and freelance writer who currently lives in Rochester.
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