What to do when time and funds are in short supply...
and I find myself in need of a few more simple gifts
to offer as a token of my affection to friends and family?
I put together packets of my famous ...
Prosperity Soup TM and Prosperity Hummus TM
Good Thoughts Collection TM
How? I take ordinary dried beans from the pantry
(today I had a lot of white, northern beans)
along with some recycled white cardboard coffee cups...
(washed out with a weak water and bleach mixture).
I dig out some of my plastic produce netting...
from our jar on the counter.
I pull out our staple supply of cellophane bags....
and repackage the beans for gift~giving.
I'm sure you must remember my long~time motto...
"Packaging is everything!"
Some of the soup packets I put inside a recycled, cardboard cup...
cradling it all with white netting
and scraps of brown paper from my recycling box
...and tied with raffia.
Other packets become part of a larger gift basket...
and carry labels I generate from our computer.
Here, I printed out my favorite bean recipes...
rolled the paper into a scroll...tied them closed using raffia
...and included them when I presented the gift.
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All were made in about an hour
using items available in the pantry...
my recycling bin and computer.
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What do you have in your pantry that would make a welcome...
yet fast and frugal gift?
~~~~~~~
Idea and partial excerpt from first book,
Frugal Luxuries, published by Bantam,NY, NY, 1997.
