As finals approach, Thanksgiving passes, and Starbucks holiday drinks appear, the undeniable fear of finding Christmas presents for your friends and family comes along with them.
One of the biggest struggles I have during the holiday season is deciding what to buy my friends. This situation can be tricky, if you have a large friend group, how do you get everyone something without breaking the bank? If you have a smaller group, how can you get everyone something that they will really appreciate and like?
Well my friends, look no further: the key to a stress free gift buying experience is to make goodie bags for your friends! It’s an easy way to keep the presents between everyone fair so no one feels left out and everyone is taken care of.
Here’s how to create the cheapest and most thoughtful goodie bags for your best friends:
- Makeup: Sephora sells lots of really cute holiday gift sets. My favorite thing to do is buy one and put one of each item in the goodie bag. Sephora products are notoriously high quality and getting a nice makeup product really feels like a gift. If you buy their holiday set it’s much less expensive than buying all of those product on their own. You can check them out here: https://www.sephora.com/makeup-kits-makeup-sets
- Socks: Forever 21 sells tons of cute socks for super cheap. You can get matching ones for all of your friends or customize them to your friends’ personalities. https://www.forever21.com/us/shop/Search/#brm-search?request_type=search&search_type=keyword&q=socks&l=socks
Dollar Tree: dude – you can go ham at Dollar Tree. They always have tons of holiday decorations and gift wrapping options – pro tip – buy your wrapping paper and goodie bags there!
Cute notes: you can write a cute little note for each of your friends to make the goodie bag seem more personal and like a gift. I like to add pictures from the past year and reflect on old memories together.
Candy: Always add candy to a goodie bag, you can’t go wrong!
The dollar section: at Walmart and target are great resources for cheap items you can buy in bulk. They often have things related to the season and will make it easy to fill your goodie bag.
Hot chocolate packets and candy canes: again, you and buy these bad boys in bulk and disperse into your friends’ bags – are you sensing a theme here?
Gift cards: If you’re stumped on what to get your friend, you can never go wrong with a gift card, especially to places like target where you can literally buy anything.