Target Christmas Clearance at 90%

Whoppee!!!! Target is doing 90% of Christmas Clearance!!! I went today and was able to pick up the below:

Dunkin Donuts Coffee $.83

Peace Mantle  Piece $3

Wreath Holder $.29

Gift Tie $.10

Mini Bodycology Set $.29

My store had sparse wrapping and ribbon left. There was Exhileration PJ shorts for $.99 ; ornaments; gift bags and tissue paper in the $.10 to $.15 range but I already have leftovers from my last Clearance haul so I resisted.   While I love shopping Christmas Clearance because you can find a lot of super deals to stock pile your gift and Holiday decor, don't go super overboard! Have a purpose in mind for everything you get.  My mantle piece is versatile enough not to be a just holiday decoration.  I could also break up the letters and use them as individual book ends or personalized paper weights.  The wreath holder, I'm actually using it for hanging additional things over my door.  And the mini bath set, can be given out as a Valentine day gift as part of basket since its not a Holiday themed fragrance.

My suggestions: the Hannakah stuff in Blue/Silver/ White ribbon is great for baby shower themed gifts.  Pretty ornaments can be great decoration tools for your gift baskets and stock up on ribbon and bows. If you ever went to Michaels or Hallmark, you would know the regular prices on these things are ridiculous.

Christmas Clearance on Gift Sets

Hurry!!!! Link Walmart has marked its gift sets down even further to 75% off!!! I found some great stuff left over that would be great Valentines day gifts or upcoming anything gifts!!!!  Stocking up on gift sets post holiday is a great way for you to shop and pick up the materials for your next gift basket gift for super cheap.  And you don't have to be crafty at all.

Here is what I look for when I stock pile up on gift sets:

They are all food related gifts, so you  have to watch the expiration date. But even if you can't gift it before then you can still stockpile these and use them after expiration by being creative.

  

I'll start with the Soup set, its 4 Distinctively Shaped cups and a Soup Mix for $3.50.  What attracted me to this set is that the CUPS alone would cost more than $1 each if I were lucky enough to find these at the local dollar store. So after expiration, of soup I would just take out the cups and make my own themed Soup Gift basket out of it.  Or I could just take out the Soup to personalize the gift insert my own Soup Mix with a cute note and not even have to deal with Wrapping.  Either way Flu Season is coming, and this would be great Hostess gift anytime of the year!

The Smore's kit is Awesome, $2.50 for 2 Hersheys Mugs and ingredients there's no Christmas decoration on it so you can literally give this out for Valentines day coming up!  But if I couldn't make it in time to gift this before expiratioin date, I would use the ingredients but try to keep the Cute Wrappings (if possible) and then make my own quick cheap basket with the Mugs.

Buffalo Wings Set, for $3.50 the ingredients alone makes this a great deal.  But even better is that it comes all packed for your. You have a Bucket, Label, Ribbon and Wrapping all done for you, if the food is about to expire just replace your own Sauces bought from Couponing and bam instant expensive looking gift set!  Plus these are great also for Valentines day coming up and the upcoming BBQ season.

Lastly, the Heddy Bear in the Cup kit. If your lazy, and the candy gets eaten up, its easy to just replace some candy in from your own Couponing Pile and regift this set.  But the other reason, I flagged this one is that finding Teddy Bears for under even $3 is kind of hard and they are great additions to any GIFT basket.  So even if you don't plan on giving this as a gift because it looks cheap, you can use the Teddy to make any of your other planned baskets look way more festive and expensive.

Nail Gift Set for Christmas

So I picked up a bunch of Cosmetic Gift sets for free at Rite Aid this week and the best part is no coupons were even needed! Even better is that it came as a gift set so you don't have to deal with the challenge of how to wrap this to make it look more gift appropriate.  Without the sticker I'd guess the gift to cost about $5 granted at Sephora it would be alot more.  I wanted to make the gift look a little more generous so I turned to my stock pile of freebies that I picked up this year from couponing and found a Revlon nail buffer and set of Emory boards (retail of about $6) so that it would look like my gift cost at least $10, even though I got it all for free and as money makers.

So I pulled out my gift wrap (that I got for almost nothing last year at Target's Christmas clearance)

And I went ahead and wrapped it.  Separately, depending on your gift audience, I could technically have had two $5 gifts.

But since my family is kinda snotty, I combined the two by tapping the ribbon the my boxed gift so I could give this to one of my girly girl cousins.

I played around alil with the presentation.

Either way thats ONE gift down, cost $0 because of Rite Aid and my couponing !!!

Starbucks Coffee Tumbler Gift Idea

One thing, I always keep an eye out for throughout the year is Coffee Tumblers, like this one from Starbucks I got for 75% off last Christmas.  It's the perfect co-worker gift and you don't even have to wrap it in cellophane just put it on their desk! So you can give just the Tumbler as the gift but it wouldn't look every festive.  Or you can pay extra to buy one of Starbuck's packaged Coffee gift sets.  Granted the retail price on most tumblers is above $10 so you don't have to worry about people thinking your giving them a cheap gift but personally, I would think its somewhat impersonal.  

 

To make it more festive and  more expensive looking (if you just got a regular tumbler from Not Starbucks);   I simply got a bow, festive mini sample of coffee from Targets $1 section, a candy cane, and added random candies into a cellophane mini treat bag (that I got from Target last clearance).  Just put some tissue paper as a filler, and add your items in on top.  I had super cheap mini Christmas card (again from Target clearance last year) that I topped gift off with as well since I didn't plan on wrapping it with cellophane wrap.

You could also keep it very sparse and just put the mini coffee and Candy cane and it would still look fine.  But cellophane wrap would definately make it look better.

Either way this is a super super easy gift, that you can pre-plan months ahead of time and assemble in less than 5 minutes.

Other variations:

You can do the Hot Chocolate version with marshmallow instead of a bag of candy.

Or for the tea drinker get a small $1 store jar of honey and put a couple version of tea bags.

Cat Lovers Gift Basket Idea

I was really inspired by this amazing video posted on Youtube called Cat Lover's Gift Basket -- The Fancy Gift Guide by Brooke Peterson.  She had a beautiful basket created which is unique because of the beautiful presentation.  I think it was the fact she had a purple/silver gray theme throughout that really tied the basket together.  And the reason, I'm posting about it is a lot of the items are coupon items and cheap craft items you could create yourself or get easily from dollar store.  Her gift basket is modern and chic enough to gift year round.  

For her basket

She had a cute cat pillow with purple flowers that she put at the bottom of her basket.

Mason Jars filled with Cat Toys

Silver personalized tins that had cat food inside.

2 decorative bowls/plates for cat food

A table place mat, that was purple that she rolled for a beautiful presentation

A grey fleece blanket ( which you can even cut up to smaller size since cats don't need the full blacket)

Modified for Christmas

You can choose a Red/ Green/ Silver theme.

Use plastic bowls/ Holiday Placemats ( from Christmas/ Valentines Clearance or just the dollar store)

Peacock Feathers ( you can get really cheap on Amazon)

And if you can't find a basket (use a shoe box wrapped in nice Christmas Wrapping)

Cheap Santa Hat for the cat or a cute cat sweater you make from a thrifted christmas sweater which you can wrap in cupcake style

And as a cheap decorative filler, you can use the cheap fabric ornament balls (removing the hooks)

Cat Treats in glass baby food bottles

Nice framed picture of Cat and Owner

I also searched the web for some ideas as well my favorites are below.

And Martha Stewart has some amazing DIY cat toy projects.  Martha's Ideas