Gifts for a crowd

So how do you manage gifts for an extended family of 30+ and friends on top of that, while on a single income.

The answer is with plenty of planning, research, confidence and handmade love. Oh and time.

Each year I bake for my family always trying a new recipe or two. However this year inline with my own health consciousness I am altering that slightly. I will still bake my traditional reindeer with green and red noses for the kids. This year as I am giving gifts to little ones I made it possible to hang them on a  tree incase people didn't want their child to have biscuits.

For the ladies I have made an Energising sugar based foot scrub using grapefruit, bergamot and peppermint essential oils. Thanks to this lovely recipe for an Easy Sugar Scrub. I made a bulk scented base oil then measured and mixed each jar individually. I used 10mL Bergamot and Grapefruit to 5mL peppermint for 1L of oil.

. The foot scrub smells divine

For the gentleman I have made sweet and spicy nuts, using this BBC Good Food recipe. I only added 1Tbsp of honey as I found that sweet enough and saved me an additional step. I chose this recipe as it contained the fewest ingredients with no egg or other ingredients I would be concerned about storage wise.

Gifts when I ran out of jars for nuts. For those who are not Dad's I named their
 labels i.e. AJ's Sweet & Spicy Nuts

To ensure the gifts feel special I always make an effort to package them nicely. To achieve this I generally purchase cellophane bags from my local party supply store. However this year I purchased jars from a lovely company called just jars. My package was delayed due to the postage provided but was promptly chased up and delivered when I brought this to their attention. I also purchased Christmas cord at spotlight, twine at my party supply store and made ceramic tags in pottery to dress the gifts.

A new thing I did this year was create and print product labels using Avery labels which I got from

Officeworks. I found the online software easy to use and the end product looks really great. If purchasing labels head to the business label section as they are better value. I bought 180 labels for $16 where as the exact same labels in a differently presented packet containing 90 was $15.

Labels I used i have 8 sheets of labels left to use
another time.

So the moment of truth lets do the cost calculations. I have omitted cellophane bags and twine as both are bul purchases of 100bags for $12 and 10metres of twine for $10 meaning what I used this year is negligible.

So excusing my awful writing here is the break down.

So in summary, the girls gift was $6.79 per person. Gentleman work out as $4 per person ( slightly cheaper as I used bags for friends as I only had enough jars for family.) and kids work out as 60cents each. Meaning in total for gifts for 47 people I have spent $175.96 avergae of $3.74 per person. Definitely the most frugal way of going.

Have a Merry Christmas and I hope you find some inspiration for your own homemade gifts. My thoughts are with those in Sydney who are experiencing a hostage situation, hopes for a resolution with no injuries or fatalities.

 Andii

All opinions expressed are my own, about my own property and are not sponsored in anyway links are not sponsored but are provided for your convenience.