10 Frugal Christmas Activities for Families with Teens

This week I am writing about different ways to have a fun, yet economical, Christmas with activity and gift ideas especially for teens.  So far we have looked at:

• homemade gift ideas for teens (which you can read about here)
• creative ways to present gift cards and money (which you can read about here)

Christmas is extra fun and memorable if special activities are planned.  These can be at-home activities or things to do in the community. Here are the suggestions I found on-line or things our family has done.

AT HOME -
1. Draw names for Kris Kringle gifts.  The Kris Kringle gifts could be little acts of kindness or chores done for another person - in secret of course!

2. Have an old-fashioned evening using only candlelight.  It is especially fun if you use candles throughout the house not only for dinner, but also during the evening activities and when you are getting ready for bed.  You could play board games together after dinner or a rousing game of charades as our family often does.

3. Have a paper folding evening.  Look on-line for a variety of fun things to make with paper.

Try making -
these pretty paper flower ornaments (seen in the picture above)
or these beautiful lanterns

or these gorgeous stars

or this clever cardboard coffee sleeve wreath

or these pretty boxes

4.  Have a Christmas reading evening (a Christmas movie evening would also work).   Have your teens invite their friends over or invite another family to join you and ask everyone to bring their favourite story and a snack.  Then snuggle down around a fire and take turns reading the books to each other and munching on snacks. 

One of our family's favourite Christmas books

5.  Have a pot luck soup party.  Who doesn't love a warm bowl of soup on a cold winter day, let alone two or three bowls.  And it's always fun to try out new types of soup.  This would be a fun thing to do after an afternoon of tobogganing

6.  Have a fun-in-the-dark evening (and I don't mean anything X-rated either).  Have your teens invite their friends over and then hand out flashlights to everyone.  Turn off all the lights in the house and play games like manhunt or hide-and-seek.  Later you can give everyone glow sticks - be sure and take photos of the designs they make with them.  They can be amazingly beautiful.

OUTINGS -

When it comes to events in your community, Google is your best friend.  Be sure and type in the year so you get up-to-date information.

7.  Go for a drive to check out the best Christmas lights.   Have everyone get into their pajamas, grab a travel mug of hot chocolate and then admire the Christmas lights.  Google your area to see where the best lights are.

 Source

8.  Attend free (or low cost) Christmas performances.  Often the best source of free concerts and shows are ones put on by churches.  For example, the Salvation Army Church in Mississauga presents "The Gift of Christmas" at the Living Arts Centre for donations only.   Also many communities have special tree lighting ceremony that are free to attend.  You could also try googling live nativity plays.  In the Toronto area alone there are several free or low cost nativity plays to choose from.  Google your area to see what is available.  The Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto performs a live nativity play for its 73rd year (you can find information here).  There is also the outdoor nativity at the country heritage park in Milton.  Two of my children and my parents have all been involved in this performance at various times (you can find out more info here).

9.  Work on doing something for someone else together as a family.  It might be helping at the local Salvation Army soup kitchen or it might be filling a shoe box with toys for the Samaritan's Purse.  

10.  Make December 24th your day to visit a local museum, art gallery, or science centre.  Trust me when I tell you that you will nearly have the place to yourself.  We have done this almost every year and it is such a nice way to spend time together and it marks the start of our festivities.  On different years we have gone to the ROM, AGO, and Science Centre in Toronto and in 2008 we even went to Chicago for a few days to take in the Field Museum, the Art Institute, and the Shedd Aquarium.  This is a picture of me taken by my son at the Art Institute of Chicago (do you see any crowds?  Nope I don't either - it was lovely).

What ever you do, the important thing is to plan to spend some time together having fun and making memories.

Creative Ways to Give Gift Cards and Money

This week we are looking at some creative and fun ways to have a great Christmas with teens.  Yesterday we looked at some homemade gifts that might be appropriate for teens (you can read the post here).   Although giving an actual gift seems like more fun for Christmas morning, it is often difficult to get something a teen will like and use.  Sometimes it is just easier and more practical to give money or gift cards, however, they seem to lack creative thought and don't leave much fun in the opening department.  

In the past I have given gift cards or money with an associated item, for example a mug with a Tim Hortons gift card in it, but I wanted to see what other interesting ideas I could find.  I googled creative ways to give gift cards and money and found some amazing ideas.

One of the best sources was here (you really need to read the list for yourself - there are so many fantastic ideas and they are so creative).   A few highlights of where to hide the gift card, include:

• in a box filled with styrofoam peanuts
• in a container of cool whip that you thaw, put the card in the middle, and re-freeze
• inside a roll of toilet paper
• put dollar bills and different messages in tiny boxes and wrap each one separately
• bake money, wrapped in foil, inside a cake 
• attach money by string inside a closed umbrella - when the umbrella is opened it rains money

I have to highlight three ideas, that I read on this list, that I thought would be brilliant for the right person.

The first idea is to buy two copies of the same magazine.  You cut out pictures from one of the magazines and glue them over the same picture in the other magazine hiding the money between the pictures.  The person you are giving the magazine to has to look carefully through each page examing each picture to see if there is money hidden behind it.  Not only do they have the fun of looking for the money, they have a magazine to read.  Brilliant!

The second idea is to buy some really hideous items that you know the recipient will think are awful and then wrap them up.  After the gifts have been opened, give them the sales receipts so they can return the items for money and buy what they want.  You would have to be sure the recipient has a good sense of humour and that the store has a good return policy, but it would make for a fun Christmas morning.

Third idea is to put the money or gift card in a treasure box (along with gold chocolate, and dollar store jewelry if you want) and bury it in a hole in the garden, although here in Canada in the winter it might be better just to hide it somewhere in the house.  Then buy a puzzle and put it together.  Flip the puzzle over and draw a map to the location of the treasure on the back of the puzzle.  Then take the puzzle apart and put it back in the box and wrap it up to give to the recipient to open Christmas morning.  They have to put the puzzle together to discover the location of the treasure box.  You can even make it more difficult by having a combination lock on the treasure box and the combination numbers are on the back of a second puzzle.  Is that not ingenious?

Try googling "money origami" and the designs will blow your socks off.  Although the ones in the photos above set the bar rather high, I have seen some very simple money folding ideas.  I remember seeing on someone's blog a banner with triangle shaped pieces of cloth and she replaced one of the triangles with folded money.  Here is another one that looks doable, with instruction from here.

I love these ideas and just may use some of them myself.  What about you - anyone given money or a gift cards in an ingenious way?  I would love to hear about it.

10 Homemade Christmas Gift Ideas for Teens

It is very easy for Christmas to get out of hand - too many gifts, too much money spent, too much time on decorating and shopping and not enough time spent doing the things that really matter.  I have recently been brainstorming ideas with a friend who finds herself without much money this year.  My friend has teenagers at home which makes it extra difficult to scale back.  It occurred to me that there might be others who would enjoy the ideas we came up with and that I found on-line.  Maybe we would all enjoy Christmas more if we scaled back some and focussed on the important things of family, friends, fellowship, and the real reason for Christmas.

I started writing up the post and realized that there were actually a lot of ideas so I'm going to highlight different aspects over the next week.   The focus will be on teens and Christmas as that age group seems to be the most difficult to shop for and to entertain, particularily if you are trying to do it on a tight budget.

I am going to start this series with ideas for homemade gifts.   Personally, I love making at least one or two handmade Christmas gifts every year.  It somehow makes me feel like I've put my heart into gift giving and been a bit thrifty as well.   As it isn't easy to think up homemade gifts for teens, today I'm going to share with you ten ideas that I have found on-line or have made myself - 

1)  Decorate storage containers to match their room's decor or reflect their interests.

   Martha Stewart 

2)  Create these pretty accessories for a jewelry box.

Martha Stewart

3)  Make a photo scrapbook or calendar of things your teen has done during the past year or from when they were young (you can see my post here about using Smilebox to create a photo calendar).  I had my calendars colour photocopied and then a cerlox binding put on so the total cost for each one was just under $10.

4)  Knit some fingerless gloves (you can find the pattern to make the gloves in the picture below here).

 Thrifty Fun

5)  Crochet, knit, or sew covers for electronic devices, such as cell phones or MP3 players (you can find the knitting instructions for the picture below here; or another one here; and how to sew the one below here).

6)  Make a jar of homemade trail mix - mmm - yummy and healthy! Or give coupons for homemade cookies every month - the gift that keeps on giving all year long.

7)  Make a neck wrap cooler (see here for instructions).

Little Birdie Secrets

8)   Make a music CD.

9)  Decorate a journal,  notebook, binder, or clipboard (you can find directions and inspiration for binders and notebooks here and clipboards here).

Arts Crafts Blog

Echoes of Laughter

10) Collect tried-and-true family recipes and either write them up on the computer and print a cookbook or even better, for the electronically-minded young person, give them a memory stick with the recipes on it.  Using the memory stick has the advantage that new recipes can easily be added.

And finallly, stay tuned for the gift I'm in the process of making.  I'll be blogging about it in the next week or so (whenever I am done).  Here's a sneak peak:

Anybody have any other ideas for homemade gifts for teens???  I'm all ears (... so to speak).

Tune in tomorrow for creative ways to give gift cards and cash.