Frugal Stockings

www.Lifeasmom.com is collecting ideas for frugal stocking stuffers. Her main post lists several great ideas. Stockings can SO add up! It is easy to miscalculate the expense of filling those stockings, they are my favorite gifts to buy and, they are my greatest Christmas weakness. We wrap many of the little stocking gifts just to increase the excitement.

• Growing up, my parents would find such neat stuff for our stockings. They always put strange fruits and nuts in our stockings; coconut, pineapples (not in it, beside it generally). I always got a pomegranate. It was such a neat tradition to try those strange fruits! I remember eating chunks of coconut every year, never liked it, but always tried it.
• I help out our budget by picking up a small item for each kid when I am making the regular grocery trip starting around August or September. I keep an eye out for little freebies and deals from August on and when December comes along I have a box in the top of my closet full of some pretty good stuff. (And my husband has no idea I have spent so much because I have spread it out so well.)
• Another great idea is to create some kind of kit. My kids love little kits, especially when they come in some kind of tiny container. A tiny scrapbook kit, a small sewing kit, a travel kit, a craft kit, all the beads and string for a necklace in a baggie, one year I printed instructions for making a simple popsicle stick box and wrapped it around popsicle sticks -something like this link: http://familycrafts.about.com/od/craftsticks/a/CraftStickVase.htm , make your own origami kit by printing simple instructions and including some small pieces of scrapbooking paper here's a link for some simple ones: http://web-jpn.org/kidsweb/virtual/origami2/exploring01_01.html
• www.OrganizedChristmas.com -one of my favorite sites has a few little printable gifts - snowman poop and that kind of thing.

Click over to www.lifeasmom.com and see all the ideas!