$20 Sock Present

My friends and I did this last year where we filled a pair of socks up with some presents (in total it should all cost about $20) and have a white elephant type gift exchange. This year I thought of this an entire year in advance. I figured if I was left with a couple of extra pairs of Christmas socks they would be easily gifted elsewhere. Because of this I got 2 pairs of Christmas socks for about $3 which left me with about $17 to fill the socks with. I had also purchased nearly a year ago (or maybe it was 6 months ago during the summer) during Bath and Body Works semi annual clearance a bath bomb. I've never actually used one before but I was thinking of a specific friend in this group that would REALLY love it... so I got it on the chance that others would also appreciate it. Anyways, at this point I was at about $12 left to spend. I had something that I had bought that could possibly work with this group a year ago but it was too big to fit in a sock (so I'm using that at another $10 gift exchange instead). Then I remembered that I had seen these cute cactus things at Chapters about half a year ago on clearance. The odds were likely not in my favor that they would have any left in the city but then as it turned out they had a bunch of them at the location closest to me... still for the same clearance price unfortunately (shouldn't it have been even cheaper by this point?) and then for the last piece to finish filling up those socks was to buy an actual real cactus (in case the fake one wasn't up someones alley). John and I had a bunch of leftover plastic pots from our wedding favours so I used one of those to put it in a better looking pot.

It wasn't easy this year considering the restrictions that were placed on what we could put inside of the socks. No chocolates (and I had a BUNCH of Lindt chocolates that could have gone inside from our advent calendar). no chapstick. No tea and no coffee... and those are only the restrictions that I could remember. So, I think I did alright all things considering.

I was pretty close to choosing a yellow topped cactus but then I saw this one lonely red looking one and thought that better matched the season.

Luckily, socks are stretchy and will be able to accommodate the larger items... I'll just need to put a tag with a warning on it to roll the sock down instead of just grabbing things out of it so that the cactus stays intact.