Our Cheap (and Weird) Christmas Tradition, Pt. II


12 Comments
Johnny's $1 Christmas gifts

Christmastime is the best time. Great food, good company, quality movies, and an awesome opportunity for me to reclaim my Weirdest Person in Our Family award that I work so hard to earn every year.

We introduced my longstanding $1 Christmas gift tradition on the blog last year, but if your finger is feeling too lazy to click over, it’s pretty simple. Every year, we head to the best (read: weirdest) dollar store in the area, pick out the most “What the heck is this?” item for each of my family members (parents, siblings, BIL/SILs, nieces all included), and drop $15 bucks for 15 high-quality gifts. The only goal is to get the best reaction from each person.

So without further ado, I give you just a sampling of this year’s loot:

Weird Christmas Gifts

A. Kitchen Vegetable Peeler
Who: My new sister-in-law
Why: Because nothing says “Welcome to the family!” better than a awkward-looking peeler.

B. Teacher Coin Bank
Who: My former-teacher sister
Why: It’s hard to see from the photo, but the bank reads “Teachers Touch Tomorrow” — all words that should never be combined in the same sentence.

C. Cat Play Glove
Who: The entire family
Why: We actually bought this exact same glove five years ago. And since we haven’t seen it since, we want to let everyone know we were offended and give them a second chance.

Apron Description

D. Apron
Who: Johnny’s newlywed brother
Why: As a new husband, he needs to learn his place in the kitchen. And lucky for him, he can now do so with his very own “poisonless” apron (see zoomed label).

Don’t you wish you were part of my family now? Unlucky/lucky for Baby Girl, she won’t be included in the mix this year, but her time of initiation to dad’s weird tradition is just a year away.

Anyone else got any fun holiday traditions that don’t cost a fortune? I’m sure Joanna would love to hear and implement them in future Christmases to balance out my freak show.

Previous Post Next Post

You Might Also Like

12 Comments

  • Reply Becky @ RunFunDone December 16, 2013 at 9:30 am

    Oh my goodness. I hate White Elephant gift exchanges with a passion, because I hate being “gifted” clutter and crap that I don’t want/need. Your $1 gifts are pretty much my worst nightmare.

    One of my family’s cheap traditions is to go to our church’s xmas eve service (free), and then drive around looking at pretty Christmas Lights (cost of gas).

    • Reply Johnny December 17, 2013 at 1:52 am

      Haha. Having exposed that tidbit, I would probably buy you two gifts. 🙂

      That’s a great tradition. In Southern CA, there was a nearby neighborhood that turned into a light extravaganza come Christmas. There’d usually be tons of traffic, but we loved crawling through the incredible displays with the whole family in our minivan.

  • Reply Mrs PoP December 16, 2013 at 10:07 am

    Every year mr PoP picks out the best loofah from the dollar store and wraps it and puts it under the tree for me. =).

    • Reply Johnny December 17, 2013 at 1:56 am

      That’s the spirit! I can confidently say that you might be the only couple in America that has that specific tradition. And that’s pretty awesome.

  • Reply Miranda December 16, 2013 at 12:20 pm

    Oh that apron! Priceless.

    • Reply Johnny December 17, 2013 at 1:57 am

      Priceless AND poisionless. And smellless, too. 🙂

  • Reply Diane December 16, 2013 at 1:38 pm

    Okay, honestly I hate clutter & junk. But this sounds like fun! Heck, if it only costs $1 they can toss whatever they don’t want after the party! It would be worth the $1 for the fun reactions~ 🙂

    • Reply Johnny December 17, 2013 at 1:57 am

      I would say 90% of the items end up in the thrift store pile by day’s end, but it’s well worth the price of admission/reactions.

  • Reply Kristina December 16, 2013 at 2:08 pm

    Wow I thought i was the only weirdo that did my xmas gift shopping at dollar stores. LOL!!

    • Reply Johnny December 17, 2013 at 1:58 am

      Happy to be a part of the same awesome, exclusive club with you, Kristina.

  • Reply EcoCatLady December 17, 2013 at 2:41 am

    Ha! Well, when I was a kid my best friend and I had a tradition of giving each other a penny on special occasions… only the catch was that you had to try to fool the other person into thinking that it was something other than a penny. This often meant wrapping it up in a box the size of a VW bug or something like that. You know… spend $5 on wrapping paper and ribbon to wrap up a penny… it made complete sense at the time!

  • Reply theresa @ SAHMoney December 17, 2013 at 12:00 pm

    this is pure awesome. i should start doing this for my brothers.

  • Leave a Reply