Creative Ways to Give Money as a Gift

Ok, I'm the great procrastinator. I always have been. This year there was a reason, I wasn't sure if our property taxes would be paid by the mortgage company or if we would have to pay them.
Property taxes always come due right before Christmas,  Property taxes were paid!

So, here I am the day before Christmas, well before Christmas Eve, but everything is closing early tomorrow & I HAVE TO BE DONE! So, I have nothing for Don or Nick. I decided to just give them the money. (I hope Don doesn't read the blog, but I think I'm safe.) I hate the idea of just handing over money, so I googled the idea & came up with some stupendous ideas. Most all of them take a little bit of creativity & some preparation.

Mother has nothing for the family. I did do some gifts for her hairdresser & a couple of friends, but nothing for her landlady aka sister (Luana)


I'm going to make this Christmas card & frame it for Don. I do have the frame. I bought it at the DollarTree in Smithfield. For Nick I'm going to put it inside a DVD, too bad I hadn't found one with money in the title, but he found one he liked in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart, so I'm going to open it, put the $50 bill in it & have Adventure Video shrink wrap it for me again.
Note to self - get to the video store before they close.

There were some very clever ideas that I would love to do, but would have needed to do them when Don was at work. One was to put money in green balloons & bottle them in a pickle jar. The one for pickles was way down the page so I'm including it

Pickles: One year for Christmas, my mother-in-law wanted money for a trip she was going to take and I remembered when I was a kid and my dad made me "bill pickles". You need a pickle or canning jar and longer green balloons. I inserted the money into the balloons and then blew them up into pickle shapes and stuffed them into the jar. I got about 6 pickles in the jar, each with $5. You can adjust your number of pickles as needed, depending on the size of balloon. I then filled the jar with water. After this was complete, I made a lable on the computer and listed the made-up ingredients! She loved it!

I found it at ThriftyFun Another one was to roll money up into straws. The idea for straws was just a short way down the page with a picture so I'm not including it here.

Mother wants to get shirts for the guys. White church shirts for DH & DSO. And a big & tall t-shirt to cover Nick's belly. He's so heavy & the cheap shirts aren't long enough so his belly shows. He needs pants too, but he's so picky. I need to find a big & tall store. Don needs a long-sleeved white temple shirt. So, I'm online tonight trying to find templates to make gift cards. They will be wrapped up in shirt boxes.