Cashmonkies Frugal Blog

The next time you go grocery shopping, ask them to place some of your items in a brown bag, instead of plastic bags. Brown paper bags can become very useful around your house, specially when making your own wrapping paper. Simply cut the bag open and start decorating. Use your imagination here. You can color in a theme, paint, stamps, use things around the house that you don’t need. Maybe you are giving someone a birthday present who enjoys sewing? Take some of your spare buttons, because we all have them laying around and glue them onto the paper for decoration. Use the buttons to make birthday balloons with some spare thread you have laying around the house. Let your mind create something beautiful and see if you can do all this, without buying anything special. Use only items around your home.

Do you have kids? Maybe they are heading to a birthday party this year? Or maybe they just want to wrap their own present for a family member. I can tell all you dad’s out there, there isn’t one mother alive that would not love home made wrapping paper done by their children. So here is what we do. Get a big sheet of paper, one that is long enough and wide enough to wrap the present up. Then I give my children some safety scissors and glue along with a pile of magazines that we always have around the house. Maybe some colored pencils as well. Let the kids create sort of a college on the paper. They can cut out all of their favorite things, or maybe create a theme. My daughter did this for her grandmother once. Her Grandma was obsessed with outside. So we created an entire outside scene. We cut out flowers, grass, trees, birds, sun, clouds and then she also drew a few things. I honestly think her grandma loved this more then the present inside.

These were just a few examples. If you let your creative side go, you can think of so many more great ideas. Making things at home, out of things around the house, is a great way to be frugal.