O.K. I'm on the Christmas bandwagon again.  I love everything about Christmas including gift giving.  I'd love to shower my loved ones with expensive gifts.  However the current economic climate, and my financial reality make that impossible.   So I've set myself a challenge - how many gift ideas can I come up with for  $10 or less.  For the sake of this challenge (and for the sake of fellow Dollar Stretchers who may be craft-impaired), I'm excluding craft/ sewing projects. Please jump in with your own suggestions

Here's my list.  These are items that I have either bought already or I have added to my list of ideas for specific people on my lists

For everyone

1. Music CD's
2. Movie
3. Board Games

For ladies

1. Leather checkbook cover or credit card sleeve - $10
2. Journal (dollar store) and a nice, inexpensive pen - $ 3  - 4
3. Trendy handbags (Check Walmart) -$ 10
4. Mug filled with packets of hot chocolate & a few candy canes to make mint-flavoured hot chocolate
5. A manicure/ pedicure mini gift "basket" - pedicure flip flops, clear nail polish, one coloured nail polish, dollar store manicure set, instructions for a DIY manicure or pedicure, in a suitable container to store everything - $6
6. Inexpensive cookbooks (if they LOVE cooking - if you hate cooking as much as I do, you might take such a gift as a hint about your cooking skills) - I saw some nice ones in the nearby dollar store.  I'd probably bundle 3 or 4 -  ($5 max)
7. Bath sets (gel and salt) plus a nice long handled scrubbie.  A wooden handled scrubbie looks more expensive that the ones with the plastic handles
8. Makeup brushes & maybe makeup if you have a good idea about the colours they'd normally wear 
9. A nice set of makeup bags
10. Eyeglass accessory set I saw at Wal Mart - a nice case, coordinating cleaning cloth, a necklace for keeping glasses safely around your neck and a bottle of eyeglass cleaner.  - I paid $5, reduced from $7 

For girls

1. A set of 12 flavoured lip glosses  (under $4 at Walmart)
2. Wallet age appropriate designs - $5
3. Craft kits e.g. decorate your own hat, bag - ($10 and under)
4. Journal & novelty pen - I bought 3 cute journals, and a set of 3 novelty pens - total cost for the three gifts $6
5. High School Musical Stationery Sets (diary, photo album, mini-notebook, pen) -$3 each at either Ross Dress For Less or Marshalls
6. Fashion watches (also from Marshalls)
7. A trinket box with a piece of inexpensive silver jewelry ($7 - 10)

The continuations of my list:-

For boys

1. Bionicles - $7
2. Sunglasses ($ 5)
3. T-shirt - $5

For Men

1. Junk Food Gift Basket

I have a new thing posted that has three ideas for siblings, but could easily be adapted for anyone and anything.

Homebaked anything is ALWAYS accepted well

Ooops, I wanted to add to your board game idea, walmart is always clearancing games, boards/cards/kids but then they go back up, and they are REALLY high around christmas time. So when you are shopping in an off season time, go look at clearanced games, we bought a game called yatzee free for all, origanally for 20$, for 5$. 3 weeks ago, its now 20$s again, and its a great game. Target may do it too. But walmart for sure

If you're looking for cookbooks that won't break your budget, check out Ollie's Bargain Barn.

Also, while you are at Ollie's sign up for the store card so you'll reap more savings.

Ollie's also carries childrens books.

Since I don't have kids, I don't price books for kids.

familyfun.go.com has great (cheap) gifts for everyone, as well as recipes. And they are all simple, the gifts are homemade and personalizable. all you need is craft supply and a few opld reuseable containers

bath and beauty isnt just for little kids you know. for little kids(or anyone) who always drops bar soap, an easy little sewing project is to make a pouch out of terry cloth (or something close to wash cloth material, or washcloths) slightly bigger than the bar of soap, sew 3 sides, slip in the soap and sew the last side, it can be made in their favorite colors, or ones to go with their bathroom designs. prints or solids, get creative, if you are good with velcro or zippers, you can make refillable ones. for a better effect when using, sew or glue (waterproof glue) netting around the bar before sliding it into the pouch, it works the soap to the outside. It also makes a great scrubber, or sponge.

(One of the girls I babysit for, is 4 years old, and LOVES the one that was bought for her, she also has bathtime markers, to write on the walls, they are like 3-4$s at walmatt in the kids shampoo/bubble bath aisle, and the pouch lets her wash her own drawings away with ease.) If you get a cheap soap=10 bars is about 4$, plus 5 washcloths (1 clothes makes 2 pouches), 1$ each, thats under 1$ per gift, less if you already have the scraps just laying around. Hotel soap bars work just fine too.

10 pouches and 10 sets of bathtub markers= 29-39$ or about 2-3$ per gift

Great ideas - keep them coming!

we always got some "needed but fun" stuff, for christmas, we of course needed toothpaste and toothbrushes, so one year, mama paid the extra dollar and got us new battery toothbrushes with our favorite characters, with one not-the-cheapest-toothpaste-we-could-find toothpaste in a flavor that we liked, (blueberry/bubble gum). We also got mini bottles of that color changing floride stuff (3$ for 2 i think, but they were good sized bottles) , we  got floss (1$ for 2) Then we got chapstick (4 for 1$ on sale) I got a new hairbrush, my brother got a new comb set he needed. then 2-4 small 1$ tree gifts that we would like, I got a plastic jumprope (the good kind that turn, I hate the cloth ones, they have no weight) and sidewalk chalk (15 sticks for 1$) and I think bubbles (3pack). He got candles in his favorite scent (8 pack), 2-pack of playing cards (card tower fan) and I dont remember the other thing or two.

overall it was 15-17$ or a little less for us both, and we really liked it, especially the thing that changes your plaque blue. plus it was stuff we needed

these are FABULOUS!

http://www.thefind.com/family/info-water-wow-doodle-book

I have 2 of them, and when I take the 4 year old i sit for to walmart these are PERFECT for the car, after about 40-50 uses, they dont work quite as vividly but still decently, walmart has them for 5$ right now. They have at least 20 different ones