JOANNE C
Answer
Garage sales, fetes, and charity shops are fantastic for bargains. You should start gathering stuff straight after Christmas at the Christmas sales. Same with birthday presents. If things are really tight, space out your socialising at Christmas and when your Auntie gives you something, give it to your girlfriend and so on. One year I took a photo of myself nude and put glitter glue and holly stickers over the rude bits and made Christmas cards and rubberstamped the inside with the words MERRY CHRISTMAS. They were such a huge hit that I sold them in boxes of 6. Just remember, anything moist like glue makes the paper curl so no big dollops. I have done this for 3 years in a row and made two calendars as well (photos round the house and garden, and photos on overseas trips) (me naked in Glasgow, naked on the pyramids, etc) but trying to put a different pose on each month made it expensive ($60 per calendar) and I made no profit on the calendars. For sedate friends I made Christmas cards from black and white photocopies of photos of myself on Santa's knee at age 5. But the worst thing was, I didn't put my glasses on and didn't notice that the date had been faintly pencilled on the photo margin by my mother. And it came out even darker on the photocopy but still so faint I didn't notice it. Everyone found out I had been lying about my age for years.
Put Christmas paper around tins and put succulent cuttings in them with really cheap Christmas earrings hanging off the "branches" as decorations as tho they were little Christmas trees. A man I know gave all his women friends home made gift vouchers for massages. None were redeemed but it caused a lot of mirth. The best presents are ones that will be used every day by the receiver cos every time they touch them they will think of you. My Aunt gave me an assemble-it-yourself marble upright kitchen paper towel holder. It is just a thick marble disk with a marble pole thing coming up from the middle of it. Every time I yank a piece of paper from the roll I think of her. I bought a skull for a dollar at a garage sale and gave it to my doctor and he keeps it on his desk. When anyone asks my lawyer at a social event, for any legal advice, he says METER'S RUNNING! to warn them he might bill them. From a scrap metal yard I got him an outdated parking meter which works, and he has it mounted next to his desk. When I told them the story behind the gift, they gave it to me free. The zoo sells bags of manure cheap, from the animal cages and calls it ZOO POO and this causes good reactions when you give these for gifts. A friend of mine and I were invited to this rich person's place for his birthday and we were broke. We thought we would get him something later, and look at his tastes first. There were loads of people there in the house and garden. We were shown over the house by his partner when we arrived and saw they had an antique vacuum cleaner museum. We slipped out of the party, sped back to a deceased estate's storeroom that belonged to my family and got the oldest vacky in the world, ran a wet rag all over it and took it back to the party and dingdonged the doorbell. When he opened the door he went ga-gaa over the gift and said HOW DID YOU KNOW I COLLECTED THESE? It turned out to be one of the oldest in his set and it was the hit of the party.
If you give someone jewellery, and they like it, they will wear it every day and remember you gave it to them.
You can make jewellery yourself out of bits and pieces of broken jewellery but you have to have flair and some craft books from the library and friends who appreciate that sort of thing.
Christmas decorations are good to give, especially a box of string lights, but that is getting up to the $10 mark. My Aunt gave me a tin angel which comes out every Christmas for the table and has very sharp edges which I have managed to stay clear of.
One couple gave me a near-life-size stuffed toy gorilla that they got at a charity shop, and a designer jacket which is so beautiful. I have dressed as Santa and visited friends on Christmas day and gasbagged to their children and their children's friends. Also at Halloween I dressed as a witch for some friends' children and answered their door for trick or treat. I had kids screaming and running backwards into each other I was so scary. The first time I opened the door the kids were so upset and screaming that I got a fright too and actually wet myself so I couldn't sit down the rest of the night. But the second and subsequent times, I got used to it.
Get cheap frames and cut out pics of film stars from magazines and sign the pics in flourishing black texta pen TO SUSIE WITH LOVE FROM BRAD, NICE MEETING YOU XXX (a pic of Brad Pitt). These were a great hit and look like real photos if you have glass over them. In some mags the film stars pose properly for the cameras so don't get a pic of Britney walking along the street eating an icypole.
If you can make Christmas fruit cakes, and can cover them with plastic icing, make a frill for round the bottom to cover where the ragged bottom meets the board, out of silver or gold cupcake paper holders. Cut the round bottom out of them, then don't let the lining fall away cos it adds stiffness, cut the remainder into two or four strips and push the top up into the icing in scollop (spelling?) pattern. Overlap the side edges. One or two of the first ones will look messy maybe, but by the time you have finished all round the cake, it will look good. If your first cake looks really messy, do two rows, the one above to hide the joins of the row below. If you had stiff gold paper doyleys you could use these instead. Long as they have a sharp stiff edge to stick into the icing.
Some perfumes at Asian shops or big department stores, have funny names. They might not smell like French perfumes but surprisingly for cheap perfumes, the packaging is nice. I got a few bottles of perfume where the packaging looked very classy and it was called NO! This caused a lot of merriment.
Just hours before closing on Christmas Eve, a supermarket near me reduced their Christmas puddings to 80cents each, and their big trees to $5. If you see a small shop open really late on Christmas eve, the owner is desperate to get rid of their Christmas stock so go in there and they will even offer you a drink while you are looking around!
My Uncle went into hospital and I gave him soap and a water pistol so he could give himself bedbaths.
Get metal serving trays from home or garage sales, doesn't matter if they are all scratched, as long as they are not buckled. If the edges are wavy and not just straight, even better. Paint it roughly with a couple of coats of different colour paints and put a couple of holes in it and hang it with fancy cord. This is a metal board now for magnets. Put a magnet on it with a note saying MERRY CHRISTMAS etc.
Is this a good gift for my close guy friend? For his 21st birthday!?
babyshoes2
I've basically fallen for this man, years ago. I just turned seventeen, and an age thing has been a problem with that. But we have feelings for each other, we just can't go past certain limits because we don't want each other to get hurt. So gift planning is difficult. Anyways, we're both into the same kind of older music, and we're both musicians. Rock and Roll, Blues from the 60's, 50's. Like that, so I thought of making him a mixed tape. Like an actual cassette tape, of a bunch of blues guys from the 30's through 60's. That'll be on one side, and the other side he could use to record on because he likes recording his live stuff through cassettes. So that's the main gift. Then he already drinks and stuff, I don't but I could have somebody buy him whiskey, his favorite, to give to him as well. And then I would take him to dinner, and there is this park out in the middle of nowhere I know he'd love to go to so I could take him there, give him that stuff, and we could just spend the evening together. Is that lame? :) What do you think? Any other ideas? Thanks!
Answer
brill idia go for it xxx
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