Christmas on the Cheap! Project

So it's that time of year where I'd normally be putting together my grossly long list of people we need to buy Christmas presents for. With Daddy having 3 step sisters and each one of them not able to keep their legs closed, we have 8 kids under the age of 13 just on that side of the family to by for.

So this year since money is scarce in our house, I have decided I am going to put together "Family Fun" Gift Baskets for each of the 3 families and let that be it. Suddenly my list for them has dropped from 13 to 3! How great is that! I figured out that I can cover all the sisters and there rugrats for about $75! Not bad.

How am I doing it? With some very smart shopping at the dollar store and my local discount store. Example 1 - I was at the discount store the other day picking up some pantry staples when I wandered over to the toy section.  I found board games for $8! And these aren't cheap knock off or anything, these are some games that are going for $15-$20 each at Target! Score! So also on the same trip while gazing at all the beautiful Christmas decorations I found a stand of all kinds of Christmas movies for $2 each! How perfect! So a board game and 2 movies for each family and I'm only down $12 per family!

In the next few weeks I'm going to head over to the dollar store and pick up some movie theater type candy, a plastic popcorn bucket for each member of the family, some popcorn and a small basket/bucket to put it all in.

So you figure with the one family of 5 if I get 5 different types of candy, plus everything else I will have spent $24! Now just arrange it in the basket and wrap it up.

I think it's a pretty cool idea that hopefully they'll like, while I save myself butt loads of money and don't have to fight with all those crazies on Black Friday trying to get a "good" deal on something.

So what do you think?