Teacher’s Gifts!

Do you or don’t you give Teacher’s Gifts?!?

 

I have only once felt that I wanted to give a teacher a gift as I thought she was outstanding and had really helped my daughter. So much so that I actually made her a Smallprint Keyring with ‘Best Teacher’ written by my, then 5 year old, daughter stamped into it. Other than that I don’t really feel compelled to give gifts, and think it is an expense that at this time of year we could do without. At the end of the day they are doing a job and it is not common practice to give gifts to someone for doing their job. However there does seem to be a growing trend of giving gifts at the end of the school year and on our playground there does seem to be an air of ‘keeping up with the Jones’!

 

The retail market have grabbed this opportunity with both hands and the shops now seem to be full of Thank you gifts for Teachers. But seriously, how many mugs, keyrings or teddy’s does a teacher want or need?!?! I wonder what they do with them all? I came under pressure from my children yesterday as people had already brought gifts in and so it had planted the seed that they should do it too! I was adamant that we were not going to go out and start buying gifts and I explained to them why. I suggested that if they really wanted to give the teacher something why didn’t they make something as it would be more personal. So we had a quick route through the cupboards and decided on homemade Honeycomb! I had never made it before, but it is a recipe that my daughter had earmarked in the cook book I got her at Christmas! I have to say, it was so quick easy and we had everything we need in the house! It looked great and tasted just like shop brought honeycomb!

The girls were brimming with pride as they left the house this morning carrying their little bags of homemade honeycomb to give to their teachers and I didn’t mind as it hadn’t really cost us anything to make! Turns out this was the perfect solution to the teacher gift giving debate! Plus now I have a recipe that I can do with the kids quickly and it would make the perfect gift to take to someones house when invited for dinner! Love it x

Cash for my trash

There is a bit of a running joke amongst some of my friends that ‘if it’s not nailed down or totally essential then Nic will sell it’! I have to admit there may be an element of truth to it! I like to say that I am very green and just like to recycle!!! In a house with three children we have a high turn over of clothes and toys. I have never really been a hoarder and in what has been the worst recession on record why not try to make some money out of something that is no longer needed. Maybe I take this to extremes as I have actually sold our broken beyond repair Flat Screen TV on Ebay and got a healthy £45 for it (when the guy turned up to pick it up we asked why he wanted it and it turned out he was a trainee TV technician so wanted it for practice). It is true even things that you consider rubbish are worth listing on Ebay. You never know who may want what you don’t and are prepared to pay for it! Ebay is now free to list if you are starting your item at 99p. I have been Ebaying for 7 years now and would recommend it to anyone! Once you know what you are doing it is quick and easy and you can make money easily. My best Ebay story has to be when we got £100 for a set of French doors that we removed from the back of our house when we had an extension. My husband was going to stick them in the skip, but me being me wouldn’t let him without giving them a go on Ebay. I started them at 99p and 7 days later we were £100 richer! This is why I love it! The down side has to be all the trips to the post office. You also need to have the time to photograph and list items which can be time-consuming!
My latest find is selling pages on Facebook. These are fab, set up my Mums for the towns they live in. You literally load your photos up to the page put the amount you want for it and wait for a taker. The person then comes to your home with cash and take it away. This is my new addiction and, in my opinion, more cost-effective, quicker and easier than eBay. There are no fees at all, no posting and the photos upload really quickly. It is very fast-moving and I find you list something and it goes within 15 minutes. The down side is that it isn’t an auction so you only ever get your asking price and often people will try to knock you down, but I am quite hard and tend to stick to my pricing. I use my local one Aylesbury Kids stuff and also a neighbouring town Thame Kids Stuff. I would recommend you look into this and if you don’t have one in your maybe consider setting one up.

Another favourite of mine is Musicmagpie! This is a better option than Ebay if you want to sell CD’s and DVD’s. It is so easy, you just log in to the site enter the bar codes from the back of the CD or DVD case and it will tell you how much they will pay for it, there is even an app for your iPhone where you just scan the bar code. You have to do a minimum of 10 items. If you accept what they offer you, you confirm the transaction and they either email or post you Free post labels for you items. Then pop them in the post and when they receive and check that they are in working order they credit your account with the money. You don’t tend to get much on Ebay for CD’s and DVD’s unless they are rare and they don’t let you charge p&p so you have to pay for that yourself. That makes this much better as you only have to provide a jiffy bag and send it to a free post address. I have found price’s ranger from 30p up to £10 for items.

These are definitely sites that you should use if you have things you no longer need or just need to de-junk. Nothing is rubbish, even if it is to you, there will always be someone out there that will want it, even if they are on the other side of the world. You’d be amazed! You can boost you house hold income by a couple of hundred pounds (tax free) a month if you have the stuff, the patience and the time!! In the last 3 weeks I have raised enough by doing this to purchase a bunk bed, 2 sets of draws, 2 sets of bedding, 2 lamps, 2 shelves and the paint needed to redecorate our daughters bedroom all from the comfort of my own home. Feeling pretty pleased with myself at the moment!