$5 Sibling Christmas Gifts

I have a huge shopping list when it comes to Christmas. In my side of the family alone, I have two parents, seven siblings and spouses, and eight children. That's a lot of gifts before you even consider J's parents, sister, brother, and sister-in-law. Normally, the older siblings in my family don't give each other gifts because it gets expensive quickly, but that is not much fun. This year, my sister Kimberlee had the idea of exchanging $5 gifts. Each couple would give a gift to all the other siblings and spouses, so we would be limiting the gift exchange to $30 for all of us. Her suggestion was to either make the gifts or buy them second hand. J and I had so much fun coming up with ideas that we decided to extend the circle of $5 gifts to his three siblings. I have to say that the gifts were all well received and it definitely made for an interesting time opening everything up on Christmas. Here is what we gave:

We gave Kimberlee various thrift store linens. The two on the left and the one farthest to the right are vintage handkerchiefs and remaining is a bread basket cloth

My sister Bekah is very practical, so I hand painted four wooden spoons for her. I picked up a package of 6 for $6 at TJ Maxx. The picture above are actually the spoons that I painted for Maria and Abby, my sisters-in-law on J's side. I forgot to take a picture of Bekah's, but will grab one for y'all sometime this week.

I put together a list of songs for my brother-in-law Rick with the help of my little sister Natalia. J put them on to a CD for me, which I titled "Our Childhood while Riding in the Car with Rick." Rick's music tastes in the 90's really shaped what Natalia and I love.

J found two leather holsters from a military surplus store in Ohio. We gave one to both James and Adam (brother-in-law and brother). I wasn't sure if they owned the correct guns for the holsters, but they both really liked their gifts.

My brother's girlfriend Margo was a bit tricky. She is extremely neat and her house does not have a lot of clutter lying about. However, she is great about putting together meals for our whole family so I found a rectangular wicker basket at Salvation Army for $1. The basket was good quality, but not the prettiest in color so I spray painted it gold. It is the perfect size for holding silverware or napkins when she has guests. I also gave her homemade coffee sugar scrub.

Along with the painted wooden spoons, we gave Abby and Maria homemade coffee sugar scrub as well. The jars above are the ones I mailed up to Ohio. Unfortunately, I totally forgot to label the jars in any way beyond names of recipients so I had to call J's mother on Christmas Eve and tell her what was in the jars. That way, she could tell the girls what they had just opened rather than them being very very confused about the brown sludge that I apparently thought constituted as a Christmas gift.

And finally, J's brother Isaac received some awesome vintage Star Wars books from our local used book store and a coordinating pez dispenser.

Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing how I accomplished a lot of these gifts. I learned that having such a limited budget meant that I had to get really creative and also think seriously about what kinds of gifts all my siblings would enjoy. It was a lot of fun!


Enjoy this post? We also have a DIY monogrammed jewelry dish and DIY monogrammed beaded gloves!