Gift Ideas

When I was in junior high and high school, my only source of income was from babysitting. At that time the going rate for babysitting was 50 cents an hour. So it would take me quite some time to save any significant amount of money. When gift giving time came around, I needed to be creative with my gifts to make my money stretch as far as it could. One year I bought my mom a pizza pan and a box of pizza mix to go with it. Another year I spent my lunch hours typing up all of her recipes. I presented them to her for Christmas in a new wooden recipe box that I had placed strawberry decals on. One year everyone received decoupage pictures; and another year, they all got string-art pictures. It makes me chuckle now to think of some of the things that I made, but my heart was in the right place, and everyone was always very gracious in their receiving of the gift, and even hung the string-art pictures on their wall.

I have always liked making gifts, and putting together gift-basket types of gifts, so I thought that in the next couple of weeks I would try and share some gift ideas just in case it might be helpful to anyone trying to think of that perfect something. I will spare you the decoupage and string-art ideas though. Actually one of the string-art pictures still remains. It belonged to my mom and dad, and bless their hearts, they kept it hanging on their living room wall for quite some time. When my mom moved out of their house, and needed to scale down, I somehow ended up with the string-art picture. It currently hangs out in our garage, and literally, whenever I see it, it makes me smile.

Just to get us going, I thought I would expand on the above pizza idea. If you know someone who likes pizza, you could buy a pizza pan, a pizza cutter, a jar of pizza sauce, and place the dry ingredients of your favorite pizza crust in a cute jar along with your favorite pizza recipe or recipes. If you wanted to spend a little more, you could even include a pizza stone. Of course any variation of this gift would work depending on your budget.

And one important note to make as this gift giving time approaches us ... we should go into it with a joyful mindset. Guard yourself against frustrations or just giving someone something to simply cross it off of your list. You are giving them a "gift". Give it out of love and with a thankful heart to God that He has been so gracious to provide you with the means to give to others.