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when I bought a teapot from Brylane Home for my grandmother, I also requested a free silk blanket for my dad (it was so beautiful and warm I actually wanted to keep it). When I placed an order with Chadwick's of Boston for myself (a reward for cleaning out my closets earlier this year), I also took advantage of the offer of a free winter jacket for one of my sisters-in-law. When ordering a throw for a cousin (also from Brylane), I requested a free bag/wallet set for my aunt-in-law. Again, free doesn't always equal cheap, and if you don't like it - you can give it away with no hard feelings: after all, it was free.

Republic of Tea was of great help to me this year. I have many tea lovers among my family and friends and RoT sells small packages of loose-leaf tea for $3 apiece - so you can pull together a terrific tea sampler for as little as $15. Such combination gifts in general work very well: depending on a person this could be a chocolate sampler, or a coffee sampler, or a soap sampler, or a sewing sampler - all of it very easy to find and put together for not a lot of money. Ross carries some gorgeous gift boxes that can be reused for storage later at seriously discounted prices, so you can find the right package and really class up whatever selection you pulled together for someone.

The last, but not the least portion of my Christmas gifts came from my own inventory: jewelry, woodburning and photography. I bought a mountain of frames, two sets of good photo paper, three sheets of veneer and got to work. Ross and Marshall's have a great selection of beautiful frames that normally go for $20 at one fifth of the price. Dollar General sells large black frames with white mats for 8" x 10" pictures at $6 apiece. They are of surprisingly good quality and make ordinary photos look like a million bucks - very classy and professional.

If you don't do photography and don't have a stash of thousands of images of your own, like I do, go to Photobucket or Flikr - you would be surprised what you can find there. Even the paid stock photography sites like 123RF have a free image section, although you would have to dedicated some time to browsing through hundreds upon hundreds of them. If you don't have a good printer of your own, go to a local pharmacy - most of them have a photo department and a photo printing machine. If you give them a disk with your images, they'll help you print them out. So, find a good photo of an ocean or a beautiful mountain lake. Print it out, put it in a simple frame with a mat and voila! - a small window of serenity for a friend or family member.

Now, of course not everyone is passionate about beautiful landscapes or architecture. For instance, my own uncle is not. He does, however, have a fondness for pinup girls, so I put a bit of a twist on the concept and sent him a framed image of Lulu - one of the key female characters from Final Fantasy IX and X games.

All in all, I selected images (both photographic and pyrographic) that reminded people of the good things and helped them see beauty where they might not notice any to begin with. These are tough times - yes, absolutely - but we must not make them even tougher by convincing ourselves and others that the world is just plain ugly and that there is nothing we can do about it. I couldn't buy all the beautiful things for my friends and family that I wanted to buy. But limited means need not mean limited ideas - use your injenuity, and you will be surprised with the fantastic things you'll come up with.

Learn more about this author, Maria K..
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