No Basket, No Problem!

I was going to a Christmas party at my aunt's house and I needed basket for my Meme's gift- well I didn't need a basket but just throwing her gift into a gift bag seemed a bit half assed. But I had a problem- there were no baskets to be found in my house and I am far too lazy to run out to the store for a basket that I would have ended up paying full price for. It was time for some good old fashioned ingenuity (cheapness).

I found an old box- well not so old because I have been getting packages delivered to my house every day (I love online shopping). I cut the flaps off and wrapped it up in some pretty wrapping paper that I got super cheap at Hallmark last year.

I made a bow from the leftover wrapping paper, put some of the wrapping paper on my card (I got all of my cards super cheap after using a Hallmark coupon), reused some silver basket filler that I got when my son brought me home a present he made for me at school , added our homemade gift and popped in a Airwick candle that I got for free from Target.

Her main gift was a $25 gift certificate to Kohls and the homemade gift was my kids hand prints. I bought a clay hand print kit awhile ago to make mother's day gifts for my mom and mother in law (I had a 50% off coupon) and it came with enough supplies to make twelve hand prints so even after this I still have four more left.

The good thing about making a gift basket with a box is that a lot of people don't like baskets because they have nowhere to put them or no need for them (I love baskets- I can never have too many!). With a box, they can admire how nice their gift looks and them throw the box away and not have more clutter in their home. Plus, from the giver's standpoint, putting some wrapping paper on a box you had laying around is way cheaper than buying a basket!

So in the end, the total cost of this gift was about $28 ($25 for the gift card, $1 for the card and $2 for the hand print gift).