GIFT BASKET MONEY

December 15, 2015

So I recently moved to the next town over. It's about 45 mins from my home town, and I don't drive. Well I could if I wanted to, but I don't. So I had to give up my job doing laundry at the hospital. NO BIG DEAL. Wasn't my thing really anyways. Well I've been here for going on 3 months now, and I still haven't found a job. I guess we can blame the economy for that, eh. Well it's almost Christmas, and since there's all these facebook pages for selling items in this town, I decided to take to Pinterest.com and try my hand at crafty things that I can sell, to make some extra cash for the holidays. pinterest has a lot of good ideas and the first thing I saw that I thought would be perfect, and I figured if they don't sell I can just give them as gifts to my family. DOUBLE BONUS! Gift Baskets! Who doesn't love a basket packed with goodies to enjoy. You can make all sorts of themed ones, like cooking and manicure/pedicure or even just coloured theme. Spa coloured theme seemed to be my favorite ones to make. Their nice, perfect for those who need to relax, and these days who doesn't need to relax?

With everything being easy to find, and cheap to purchase.. I bought almost everything at the dollar store. I even got my baskets at a second hand store for dirt cheap. And they SOLD! People loved them!

Here are my examples:

 This one I called the winter warmer's one, on account of all the nice hot drinks added, to a DIY mug.

 These ones are my spa colour themed ones.

 This is the cooking one.

Of course you can customize these any way you want, to suit you or your customer needs.These baskets had only cost me each about 5-10 dollars to make and sold for around 15 dollars.

The other thing I saw on pinterest, that I was really interested in are the night before Christmas boxes for children. Now the only children I have are 4 legged ones, so they weren't really something I'd make for my house, but I thought you know, these boxes have lots of stuff to keep the kids occupied. Especially the ones that have babysitters, their perfect right. I figured, depending where I got the movies I'd be paying somewhere between 15-20 dollars for each and could probably sell for 25. I adjusted it a little bit, to fit the different ages. The baskets on pinterest included pj's for the child and I didn't want to have to go out looking for Christmas themed pj's for kids that I've never met,so I canceled those out. I basically took the idea and made it my own. I included movies, juice boxes, chocolate and candy canes,along with popcorn. I added in a few activity things like colouring book and pencil crayons, and then because everyone likes to leave cookies out for Santa I added in a batch of my homemade sugar cookie mix so they can make Santa cookies! As a child growing up I had this one aunt who gave me an ornament every year and I saw different pinterest posts about making your ornament, So I added in a personalized ornament in every box. I thought it was a great idea, but didn't wanna pay that much for something that wouldn't sell (seeing as I have no kids of my own to give them to), So I just posted the description. And YUP they sold! Now I had to go and make these boxes. I had nothing except the boxes. Went shopping, did them up all nice and pretty.

Then I added the picture to my post on facebook and BAM! They went like hot cakes!! The parents loved them, they were actually really excited and I had to make like 15 more of them! So if it's Christmas and your short on cash for gifts, this is definitely something you can do for your community, that would make you a ton of extra cash. I just hope the kids are just as excited for these boxes as the adults were!!