If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you'll know that I'm the team lead of the proofreading department at a title company.
Christmas always brings an interesting dilemma...what to give to my staff for Christmas. Last year I only had 5 people working for me so it was easier to be generous. I gave each of them a basket with a plant, a Christmas mug, an ornament and a few other assorted items. It probably cost me about $12 for each basket I made.
This year I have 14 people working for me. There's no way I can afford a gift like last year's, so I've been wracking my brain for ideas.
I finally settled on the following:
~ a mini loaf of zucchini bread
~ a Christmas mug filled with:
~ a packet of fancy hot chocolate
~ a candy cane
~ a Little Debbie gingerbread man
~ a small amount of homemade toffee bars (made with saltine crackers!)
~ a Christmas ornament to be part of the decorating of the contents of the mug wrapped in cellophane
~ a card for each of them.
The zucchini bread will be easy and inexpensive to make, especially since it's a mini loaf for each of them. I found Land O' Lakes hot chocolate on sale 2 for $1 and bought two packets each of 7 varieties. The candy canes were on sale for .99 for a box of 12, the gingerbread men were the same price for a box of 8. Walmart had some beautiful Christmas cards that are clear about the true meaning of the season without being heavy-duty that cost $1 for a box of 12
The ornaments came from Dollar Tree and cost $1 for 3.
The hardest thing to find were the Christmas mugs. I didn't want to spend $14 for mugs, but would if I'd had to. Last week after work I made an impulse stop at a nearby thrift store and found Christmas mugs there for only .25 each, and they were nice! So for less than $4 I got 14 mugs
Without calculating the cost of the cooked items and estimating the additional cost of the cellophane and the ribbons to wrap the mugs and bread, each gift will cost me about 1.50! I anticipate spending about $20-$25 for the ingredients for the zucchini bread and toffee bars, which isn't too bad at all.
I plan to do the baking and putting the gifts together this coming weekend and having them for everyone on Monday the 13th. I sure hope they like it!
I may make some extra mini loaves of zucchini bread as gifts for my boss and 3 or 4 others here at work...I'm not sure yet.
It's fun to give gifts and even more fun to be creative and fit them into the budget!
