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Thrifty (but Unique) Holiday Gifts For Young Children
By Dian Dewi, Fri Dec 9th

Thrifty (but Unique) Holiday Gifts for Young Children

By Dian Dewi

It’s December, and as the holiday season drew closer, youfound your preschooler saying this to you, “Mom, I want this andthat toy …My friend is going to get those from his mom. ”

When you went and checked the price online, you were shockedwith the price. You couldn’t believe that a child toy can bethat expensive. To make things even worse, you doubted thatthose toys would make a good buy and did not feel good aboutgiving them to your precious little one.

Does this situation sound familiar to you ?

If your answer is yes, don’t despair ! Chances are, almost everyparent, have come across this situation. In one hand, you wantto make your children happy, but in the other hand, you knowthat you dislike those toys and buying those expensive toys willdefinitely create a huge dent in your pocket.

The question is, how are you going to deal with this situation ?

These are some strategy you can use to deal with this situationand at the same time dramatically decrease your spending on toyand other gifts during the holiday season. The key are: skillfulbudgeting, advance planning and creativity.

To begin with, figure out your budget for each child. If youdon't like your child's choices of toys, you can do either ofthese followings:

• not buying the toys that yourchildren want, but replacing them with toys that you know yourchildren will definitely like.
• buying one toy that yourchildren want, and add some more toys of your choice.

To find out which toys are the best buys , I suggest you to jotdown previous toys your children got during the holidaycelebration. Make note on how often those toys are used and theestimated price. By doing this, you can roughly determine thecost of use for each toy. You may find that something like boardgames or construction toys are the best buy. In this case, planon buying a different version of these toys. Chances are thatyour child will also love them.

To decrease the spending, you may want to add homemade gifts tothe mix. The beauty of the homemade gifts are that they can beunique and more personal. These features are something that thestore-bought items cannot compete with. And of course,price-wise, they are cheaper.

In making homemade

gifts, always try to make use of what you'vealready had at home since this can decrease the cost evenfurther. And don't try to replicate any store-bought toysbecause you may not be able to compete in that area. Instead, gofor uniqueness and personal touches.

Here are some ideas to make your creative juices flowing:

• Personalized scrap book.
• Personalized apron for girls.
• Personalized draw-string bag for girls with some jewelleryand home-made hair accessories.
• A couple of 'coupon' for:one day outing, staying up late, one chore-free day and so on.
• Customs for pretend play.
• Doll accessories: clothing,blanket, towel, diaper.
• Homemade wooden blocks, felt puzzleor personalized wooden puzzle.
• Homemade bedroom decorationaccessories or a bedroom makeover.
• Homemade car mats forboys. To make one, get 1 yard of canvas fabric, seam the edges.Paint the roads, stores, stadium, and so on.
• Homemade sockpuppets.
• Old toy make over. This includes: repainting an oldbike and adding 'bells-and-whistles' to it.
• Personalizedtreasure box.
• Audio casette of your own voice reading aloudyour children's favourite book. The other variation of this itemis to tell a story using your child as the main character.
• Homemade dolls and stuffed animals.

One of the best idea for a homemade toy gift is: gathered itemsfor pretend play. To do this cheaply, you need to plan inadvance.

For instance, you can make a doctor office set by putting an eyedropper, syringe (with no needle), popsicle sticks (as tonguedepressors), store-bought toy stethoscope, office supply,bandage, X-ray film imitation (use black construction paper withcardboard backing. Draw skull on it), flashlight, cotton wool,and many more.

You can also make a store set, detective set or other set whichyou know your children are interested in. The nice thing abouthomemade pretend play set is that you can use real items and isoften more complete than the store-bought one.

Finally, I would like to encourage you to think that expensivedoes not mean better. In fact homemade gifts can be assatisfying as the store-bought one. And more importantly, theyare much less expensive.

About the author:Dian Dewi is a reseacher and busy mother of two young children.She is the webmaster of Best Child Toys, whichprovides information on how to choose toys which are fun, safeand educational.