$5 or Less Christmas Gifts

I'm totally one of those annoying people who loves giving the perfect gift as much (or more) than getting the perfect gift. For that reason, my favorite part of Christmas is our giant family gift exchange - 25 people all bring secret gifts, pile them up, then randomly pick and exchange them!

It's called a White Elephant gift exchange and the "rules" are here. One of our additional family rules is that the gift can't cost more than $5. Challenge accepted.

My personal goal is to bring the most frequently exchanged gift, so I usually choose all of the gifts my family brings to the party - five of them this year.

Because you can't see it in that picture, I need to point out that the mug is actually a horse's butt and has the words "Every Family Has One" across it. Needless to say, the whole family got a great laugh out of it :)

The most hotly contested items...

This cute plant in a cup - $0.50 for the cup and $3 for the plant!

This drug book for $0.69. Why you ask? Well it has a secret...

Using a version of this tutorial, I MADE IT INTO A BOOK SAFE!! Labor = $0. 

Besides, I've always wanted to try to make my own book safe. Why not use every opportunity to try something new?? It turns out it only takes about 4 hours over two days (because the glue needs time to dry).

Pro Tip: Always bring gifts you'd like to take home yourself. Tim and I ended up with one of these each. Can you guess which ones???