Gift Wrap Tips and an Easy DIY Gift Bag

I LOVE wrapping gifts. I love wrapping the gifts I buy more than I love shopping for them. Part of that may be due to my getting so much of my gift wrap from the dollar store. There is nothing worse for me than looking at gift wrap at places where you tend to buy more gifts (for me, that's Baby's 'R Us, Target, etc... I have a different gift registry to look at once a month at the least at this point in my life). If you really wanna go all out, you could end up spending almost as much on wrapping the gift as you did on the gift itself. Throw in a card from one of those places, and you've easily busted your budget.

Do what I do: Make the extra trip to Dollar Tree.

Wrapping Paper
Of course, like anything else at the dollar store, you have to be a little careful about quality and quantity, especially with wrapping paper. You need to check your footage on the rolls. Sometimes you're simply buying a dollar's worth of wrapping paper you could get anywhere else because it's a small quantity. You also need to be careful with the quality as well. I bought some wrapping paper that was pretty cute for a baby shower:

Gotta love the baby elephants. You probably can't tell, but they're saying "Mama and Dada" and "GooGoo / GaaGaa" so I had to buy it. Unfortunately, when I got in on the present, it was basically transparent. Could totally see what the gift was. I just pretended it wasn't and hoped no one else would notice, put a bunch of ribbon on it and strategically placed the card, but I probably won't be buying this type of of wrapping paper again. I've also noticed that some wrapping paper I've bought wrinkles and tears much more easily than other wrapping paper.

Here is what to buy:

Dollar tree has several styles of this "brown paper bag" type wrapping paper with different designs. It's durable, wraps well, and I like this style, personally. I just bought another style I saw on my latest trip, although next time I need to get something a little less girly, which they usually have in a red-checkered print.

Gift Bags
You really can't go wrong with a gift bags at Dollar Tree, but I really like to get my money's worth by looking for two-packs. Again, they usually come in the brown paper bag material, but I like that.

One way I've learned to get a really unique looking gift bag is to buy a two pack of the brown paper bags and getting some of the cute three-dimensional stickers they also have there. It's as simple of a DIY as it gets (I'm not crafty enough to do anything other than simple DIYs....)

 Before

After

I feel like it gives you something really unique that's great for a gift. Add some tissue paper, which of course they sell for a dollar in HUGE packs at dollar tree. I had to restrain myself from the cute stuff they had last time I was there. I'm limited in space, or else I'd have an entire room dedicated to wrapping paper and my teaching supplies. Some day....

Dress up a photo frame - DIY

I bought this frame at Dollar Tree:

I thought it was a pretty cute frame for Dollar Tree, but I wasn't a fan of the matte, and I hate being limited to a horizontal picture. I have no idea what picture I'm going to put it in at this point, but I wanted to change it a little.

So next, I bought this shelf liner:

I think I even saw a DIY on Pinterest with this same shelf liner, and someone put it on the back of a bookshelf or entertainment center. Not quite my style, but for a frame, this shelf liner and I can get along just fine.









After unceremoniously taking out the ugly matte and throwing it away, I lined up the back of the frame on the back of the shelf liner and traced with a pen:

Because the shelf liner has squares on the back, I gave myself an extra square for something to fold over onto the back of the frame:

I peeled of the back of the shelf paper and lined up the back of the frame:

Folded the liner over like so:

Finished product:

I like it much better. I could even put a 5x7 in there if I cut off about 3/4 of an inch.

Before

After

When I'm ready to put the picture in there, I'll simple tape it in place. You could even make a collage with the frame if you wanted to. Easy Peasy. Maybe I'll find something else to do with the shelf liner. I might even line my shelves, imagine that!

Food at the Dollar Store - Dos and Don'ts

One thing about the dollar store that can be less than thrifty is the grocery section. You have to be careful, because a lot of the stuff they sell is less than a dollar at the normal grocery store. Here are a few "do's and don'ts" I've created for myself.

DO buy a loaf of bread
The bread at my local dollar store is the good, name brand stuff. They have a good selection if you go there on the right day, too. You rarely can get even store brand bread at the grocery store for $1 unless it's on sale. The catch is obviously that the sell by day is probably a few days away. In my experience, that bread lasts way after the sell by day. I've also noticed that the store tries to hide the fresher bread with a later expiration date in the back of the store. (Can't fool me, I look at EVERYTHING!) 

DON'T buy their off brand soda
OK, so I honestly haven't tried it. I just know it must be gross. They usually have 20 ounce bottles of the good stuff for a dollar, though. I can't seem to resist that on a hot day. I like to think of it as a reward for another dollar store trip successfully accomplished.

DO try new things
Sometimes you see products at the dollar store that didn't sell at the regular store. It might have an expiration date on a product where most stores want a little more shelf life, but it's still good. It might just be some odd ball product that didn't take off. But if it sounds interesting, why not try it? After all.....It's only a dollar!

Haven't tried this yet, but I'll let you know when I do:

DON'T buy canned vegetables
Well, you really shouldn't eat them anyway, because fresh or frozen is better, but canned vegetables are always cheaper in the grocery store. Even if they have them for 50 cents a piece, sometimes the grocery stores have them on sale for less than that.

DO check serving sizes/ounces
Sometimes a product that seems like a good deal, really isn't because it's smaller than you realize. I bought a biscuit mix that made me dream of having Red Lobster cheesy biscuits at home every night. The result was delicious, but it only made 6 biscuits. A can of biscuits at the grocery store usually makes more. That said, I totally went back and bought 4 packages because they were pretty tasty and I wanted to eat them again. (Did I mention my other addiction is carbs?)

Confessions of a dollar store addict...

"Well, it's only a dollar!" I say once again, as I plop something I probably don't need in to my green shopping cart. (Green, to represent all the money I save!)

"I could buy that at the dollar store!" I declare, sneering at the price tag of something in Wal-Mart or Target (unless it's in that lovely bargain aisle, of course).

Yes, I'm a dollar store addict. I find excuses to go there just about once a week. 

I'll look around at the same stock time after time, just to make sure I didn't buy everything I wanted the first time. I do a mini happy dance when I see something new. I don't know what time of year it is until businesses that don't need price tags change their seasonal aisle.

I have no plans for reform. I teach at a Title I school, I was raised by parents with the superpower of thrift, and my husband and I regularly discuss our budget on date nights out. There is no hope for me.

What I hope to share here is all of my finds, try out some of those stranger products, and a few things I've learned about organization at home and in the classroom. (It's a big work in progress, folks...)