Big family, trying to find gift ideas (funny/cheap) for us to do altogether to save money!

[Bananamama1213]

So next year me and my family are going on holiday, there is 12 of us altogether! Understandably we want to save as much money as we can!!

I've seen traditions where you buy funny socks for each person.. but then I don't understand as you'd end up receive a lot of socks?

So I'm looking for something like that. These are who I need to buy cheaply for.. my mum, auntie, sister, SIL. I also have 2 sisters (7 & 9) and a 4wk old nephew to buy for.

Other members of my family will be getting a picture of my children from a photoshoot we had recently. And maybe a little gift of bath things or something (Grandparents, MIL, FIL and Step MIL).

I have seen a few other traditions like buying something really funny from Poundland and seeing who does the best. Or maybe just something silly?

As a family we haven't been able to decide on something properly and i would like to get started buying!

Why not do Secret Santa for the adults

I'd either do a secret santa or put a budget of £3 for each person and see who can come up with the funniest or most inappropriate gift.

If you are all saving to go on holiday, then id suggest one of the following:

1. Only buy presents for the children and elderly relatives.

1. Do secret Santa for the adults with a maximum spend of say £20.

Whilst novelty socks/poundshop gifts are fine, why spend money on crap that will end up in the bin.

Hi we do this with all the adults, each adult buys 5 little presents for anythung up to a tenner, then all the presents are put together and numbered as there are 8 adults the presents are 1 to 40 then we have a second set of numbers and we pick a number and you get the present with that number on it, we keep going around until all rhe presents are gone and each person has 5 presents, its great fun as we put in joke presents and housey things or toiletries and then at the end we all try to do swaps for what we dont want, so i could say ok who wants mens boxers and try to bargain for something someone else has i would like, you could set a limit on the little presents and say they have to be a fiver so your not spending much, you have fun trying to find the presents, fun seeing peoples faces when they open their surprise and fun trying to get rid of stuff for things you would like.

If you are all saving to go on holiday, then id suggest one of the following:

1. Only buy presents for the children and elderly relatives.

1. Do secret Santa for the adults with a maximum spend of say £20.

Whilst novelty socks/poundshop gifts are fine, why spend money on crap that will end up in the bin.

Double posted

At our work Xmas do we all had to buy something you could wear from a £1 shop. It was lucky dip and you had to wear that item during lunch. It was pretty funny: The usual Xmas hats, socks, ties, then plenty of random stuff like massive pants, a bra(!), rubber gloves, reading glasses, fairy wings...

Just tell people you are cutting back and only spending x amount per person and ask for ideas from them. I would not consider a photo of a family child a Christmas present. I would give them that anyway. And maybe steer clear of the novelty gifts. A cinema voucher / bottle of wine etc or something you know they like would be better than something tatty.

Or the secret Santa idea is also a good idea

Thank you for the comments. I spoke about them with my mum, we are going to do the secret Santa style.

Each household will buy 4 presents in a budget of £20. The male/female gifts have been dished out to make it fair. We'll all get 2 presents each, and buy the same wrapping paper so we don't pick one that we've brought.

We're also going to do one for the children. So have colour co-ordinated paper for the older girls, the boy and the smaller girl. Which will be anything from crafts, books, sweets, makeup. Will make them feel included too!

As ideas, why not some easy to pack games to play all together on your holiday ? Card games, or dice games would be easy to take with you.

We started doing a pass the parcel game instead of gifts. Everyone buys something funny that could be for anyone for no more that a tenner. It's wrapped and it's contents are kept secret. Between dinner and dessert we get out our gifts and pass them around until a song ends. If someone has their own gift, we pass them around again until everyone has something they didn't buy. The only 'fix' is for my DS who is the only child. He has a gift that we've marked out and ensure he ends up with at the end.

Secret Santa definitely sounds the best way to go. A massive stash of novelty £3 presents would a bit of a waste. May just be me being grumpy but my dad used to get me loads of "joke" presents when I was a poor student, I always just wished I could have had one present I actually wanted!!

Do you spend Christmas day together? One of my favourite things is a secret santa that we do on Christmas Eve. Set a price, ours is £5, draw names from a hat. Go to town altogether, (we live near a small market town so not amazing shopping but just enough), time limit of 1 hour could be more.
In that hour you have to buy something for the person you drew out of the hat with your £5. All meet for coffee or in a pub at specified time. Give presents when it suits.
I love this, it gets everyone out of the house on Christmas eve, it's fun trying to avoid people when you spot them in shops just in case they might see what you've bought, you can get some hilarious tat for £5 and equally because some shops are already marking down for the sales you can get amazing gifts for £5.

The sock thing would be you getting socks for everyone, brother getting something edible for everyone, sister getting a scarf for everyone etc, so you don't all buy socks and everyone would only get one pair of socks, one scarf, one edible gift etc.

Does that make more sense?