Quick, Easy and Inexpensive Christmas gifts.

The folders I have given to family members and friends I have mentioned in previous articles, but will include them again here since they are SO popular. I buy an inexpensive folder from a department store - the last ones I bought were $1 each so I bought ten and put them away. They were the kind that had the plastic pocket that you can slip a piece of paper in so you can design the front and back of them too. I search the internet for lovely poems or sayings (the scrapbooking websites are fantastic for this - find links at the bottom of this article). I type the poems up on Publisher with a nice font in different colours, often with a border or picture added. After printing these off, I put them in inexpensive plastic leaflets (around $5 for a pack of 100) and put them in the folder. The folder then becomes a personalised book, that is purely suited to the receiving person. I gave my sister one full of poetry and she adores it, and I add to it each year with more poems in leaflets. These can be made into "Rainy Day Folders" for children, by printing off activities, worksheets, craft recipes or colouring pages from sites like The Ideas Box (link below). A humourous person may like a folder full of jokes or funny stories. The beauty of these (other than being inexpensive) is that they can be adapted to suit the person who is receiving the gift - my sister in law is pregnant with her first child, and I am currently making up one for her full of articles on birth and natural parenting. Often nice heartwarming chain emails can be suitable and we have all received funny stuff through email - I save these in my mailbox so I can refer to them at a moments notice. The folder front can have a nice picture painted on it, perhaps covered in patterned contact adhesive, or you could glue a picture, a tassel, a gold charm - the variations are endless. If it is a folder as mentioned before with the slip in pocket on the front, a picture could be printed from your computer with the person's name also.

I spent most of last week making windchimes. I collected old spoons and forks and bought more at the local Salvation Army store -

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