Workplace Gift Giving

Let me start this off by giving a little background information for some of you who might not know.  I'm a kindergarten teacher and I teach along side a team of 10 others, plus my assistant.   As a grade level we decided to do Secret Santa (I'll be posting about this as soon as the last gift comes in the mail.), but then my assistant told me that the majority of the kindergarten teacher pairs usually give a small gift (candy canes, Bath and Body Works holiday soaps, homemade treats, etc.) to everyone on our grade level team and our administration team (our principal, assistant principal, instructional coach, and literacy coach).  Look, I don't want to sound like a Scrooge, but let me be real- that's 14 additional people to buy for on top of our Secret Santa, each other, our students {Thank you, Scholastic $1 Holiday Books!}, and all of the other people in our lives we buy gifts for.  And while my assistant and I will split the cost of the gifts for the 14 people, gifts for 14 people has the potential to add up fast.  On the other hand, I couldn't stop thinking about how these people have welcomed me {and all my questions and ideas} with open arms when I joined their team.  How could I not get them at least a little something?  So I told my assistant we have to do something, but something affordable.

Our first thought was a blanket with this adorable gift tag from Cara Carroll's Pearls, Handcuffs, and Happy Hour blog.  A few of us (myself included) use blankets to stay warm at recess and everyone who doesn't have a blanket always says 'That's a great idea!' or 'I need to starting doing that!', etc. so we thought this would be a perfect, easy gift!  But we quickly realized we couldn't do it on the cheap so we were back to square one.

If you follow me on Instagram you know that I'm participating in a December Lettering Challenge and while I was working on the prompt for Friday on Friday afternoon I starting thinking about cute, budget friendly Christmas gifts I have gotten in the past.  I remembered a fun glitter nail polish with the cutest gift tag that said 'For Your Mistle'toes' This Holiday Season'.  Umm hello Abbey, this is perfect, BUT your principal is a man, and that's when I thought of socks.  Amazon has so many different options of Christmas socks in bulk for a little more than $2/pair.  I quickly found more even cheaper than that so my assistant and I agreed we were going to look at them together on Monday, but on Saturday morning she texted me telling me Old Navy had $1 socks- Saturday only.  I was going to be right by Old Navy later that morning so I told her I would stop by.  They didn't have a huge selection, but for $1 I wasn't going to complain.  I picked up socks for all the ladies and then I got to packaging them.

I started by using Microsoft Word to design a gift tag- For your mistle'toes' this Christmas.  I printed the gift tags on cardstock and used a black Sharpie paint pen to black out the price.  I let the paint pen ink dry while I cut out the gift tag.  Then I tied a bow with ribbon around each pair of socks and  attached the gift tag using Scotch mounting squares.  Look at how adorable they turned out!

Men's Christmas socks were harder to find, but I did end up finding them at Target (not my normal Target) in the Dollar Section.  The men's socks were all $3.  They had a few options- many of them really cute or funny, but not something you give your boss.  Here are I ones I picked out. 

What gifts do you give to the people who work on your team?  Let me know in the comments below!  Who knows, I may borrow one of them next year!  

PS- I'll start by posting a picture of the gift I gave to my teammates last Christmas.  My team was much smaller last year (just 3 of us) so I was able to do something a little more, but still very affordable.