So I
wanted to open my blog to posts that had to do with cheaper alternatives to
things. I am a BIG fan of being frugal. This doesn’t mean that I’m “cheap” like
Ayyub likes to call me sometimes! I just know where and when to cut corners. We
both work hard for our money and I want to see it stretched as far as possible
especially since we are about to have not one BUT two very young children.
So I
wanted to do something special for Jaylen’s grandmas since they are such a big
part of his life. I was thinking that flowers or chocolates are so expensive
for being so temporary. Once you gobble up the chocolate and the flowers wilt,
then those gifts are over. I wanted to get creative and I wanted to involve Jaylen.
I bought those really cute Valentine’s Day heart candies. You know the ones
with the sayings on them? I purchased these at The Dollar Tree and I got SIX
boxes for 1$! I also purchased 2 picture frames from The Dollar Tree for 1$ apiece,
finger paint and superglue. (I do not recommend buying the glue from here
because it SUCKED but we ended up having some good glue at home so I just used
that.) I then got crafty! I separated the candies by color and I glued them
with the saying side NOT showing (because a lot of the sayings were crooked or
really faint and just looked tacky). I color coordinated the frames and just
super glued all the little candies on their. It was time consuming but they
turned out GREAT! I took the finger paint and some old scrapbooking colored
paper that matched each frame and painted J’s hand and had him stamp his handprint
on the paper. Lying in my scrapbooking box I had those little paper letters and
numbers so I just glued Jaylen on top and the letter 1 on the bottom. Now his
grandmas have a cute keepsake of his handprint at 1 year old!
I never
was able to take pictures of how they turned out but I will show you a picture
of where I got the idea from. I obviously tweaked it to suit my needs but these
are so inexpensive and fun that you can do virtually anything with these. I
also think that these little heart candies on the perimeter of a hand held
mirror would be adorable as well for a little girl or even a teenager!
I kept
Ayyub’s gifts simple. I made him some homemade chocolates using a 6 pack of
Hershey Chocolate that I got for about 3 dollars and little heart molds that we
had from my mom’s wedding. These are REALLY inexpensive. They run around 2-3$ apiece
and you usually get 2 molds that can make about 20 chocolates. You can get them at Wal-Mart or Michaels. I
just melted the chocolate and refrigerated overnight. They were so YUMMY!
I also
made him one of those “coupon books” that I plan to give him when we go away.
These are personal coupons you make (I used construction paper and markers) and
they say stuff like, “This coupon entitles you to one 15min massage”…stuff like
that. These are so great to make because they come from the heart and you can
personalize them to whatever your man likes! Since its Valentine’s Day you can
get a little sexy with these as well.
When we
do go out, we plan on using a gift card to dinner that we had received for
Christmas. I always try to save these for special occasions like this so we can
feel like we are having a little but more luxury than we are really paying for.
I also love sites like Groupon.com and Livingsocial.com because they offer
great services and nights out for over 50% off discounts!
I hope you
all liked this post and I hope you all had a GREAT Valentine’s Day! Let me know
if you want me to do more frugal posts like this.
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