When I first came to America things did not go as planned. The result was some very tough times and a severe shortage of money. Xmas was a time when we put the kids first and made sure that there was plenty of good food on the table. But for us we had to get creative, over a couple of years we came up with the following idea.
Gifts were limited by price, nothing could be more than $5.00, and you could only spend a total of $25.00 total. The dollar store was a good source, but I think my most creative idea came from a mentor I was listening too at the time which was more about love and relationships. His idea was that over a year he wrote in a book on a separate page every day the reason why he loved his wife. I took this idea and adapted it a little using post cards. Every post card was a gift of some sort. It could be having a movie night with popcorn, watching a romantic movie, cooking dinner for my wife, cooking a specific dish she liked, doing the washing up, washing her car, going on a walk in Valley Forge etc., you get the idea.
There was no date on the cards and they did not have to be used in any specific order. It just allowed her to decide what she wanted and when. I think one of the cards was even just some alone time as she was an introvert who recharged her batteries by spending time alone. I on the other hand loved being around people.
It took some time and some creativity to create all the different cards, and I will admit, I repeated several to complete the gift. You could only use a card once, then it was no longer valid, so having repeats allowed for some events to be repeated if wanted. Honestly, I do not think she actually used them that much, but it was an original idea and I presented it in a nice box with each card hand written and all wrapped with ribbons.
The picture for this post was created with chatgpt using DALLE program and then converted from webp to jpeg using Shutterstock.
Comments(30)