Gifting on a Budget

February, 2024

By Anali Garcia, Staff Reporter

As Valentine’s Day approaches, many people are spending a lot of money on their lover, but my question is, can you do it on a budget? The answer is yes, it is possible! Now let me show you how.

To begin, let’s make our budget under $50. Believe it or not, with that budget you can get chocolate, teddy bears, gift baskets, and a love note. Now grab your cart and let’s get to work. First, Walmart is one of the cheapest, most affordable, and easiest stores to find these items. In Walmart, you can find a white large basket for $6.94 to place your Valentine’s essentials. Next up, you can move on to the chocolate. Let’s get two types while we are at it, the first chocolate will be a bag of Reese’s for $3.96 that will be used for a craft later on and then the second is to buy a regular box of chocolate for $11.98. Moving on from the snakes and basket, you can purchase a stuffed animal which is only $2.97 making your total come out to $25.85. We still have plenty of more money to go ahead and grab a few more items to fill up your basket. You can’t have a basket without a blanket so let’s grab a nice red one which is only $3. And on your way out, go ahead and grab some of those pretty flowers for $4.97.

With that, your total should come out to $33.82. Now let’s move on to our next project and go on to make some crafts. To pick up your supplies for the crafts, the next stores you will need to go to are Michael’s and Walgreens. In Michael’s let’s grab three different small-sized cardboard boxes with lids, this comes out to around $13.97. Your next stop is Walgreens, where you will need to order 12 pictures to align with the size of the boxes. These pictures will be around 3 dollars. Once you have all your materials, we can go ahead and put this basket together. To begin, get the smallest box out of the 3 boxes fill it with the Reese’s candy you bought earlier, and cover it with a lid. The next step is to grab the other 2 boxes and individually cut the corners off of each box. Once you have cut the corners, get your pictures and glue or tape them inside of the boxes on the 4 sides you have cut. When that’s done, place lids on all boxes and then top each box laying flat from largest to smallest. Your final step is to place all your goods into your basket to your liking/preference. And with that, you have made a beautiful and sweet gift for your lover for under $50.