‘Tis the season for gift planning and shopping! Christmas is three weeks from today! Have you ever thought of giving Christmas gifts from things you find at a thrift store? If not, I’m here to tell you to do it! Contrary to some people’s opinion, not all thrift store merchandise is junk. You can find beautiful, useful and valued items perfect for gift giving at thrift stores.

These items can be new with tag or like new without tag, still looking never used or gently used. They are perfectly suitable to give as gifts. For example, you can often find books that look brand new. It’s fun to get a basket from the thrift store (they abound) in like new condition and fill it with like new items that you know your recipient is interested in, to make themed book baskets. Of course you can add new stuff too. To make it easy on the budget add not-cheap looking stuff from the dollar store. Recently I decided I wanted to assemble a gift basket for a friend. I knew she loves books by John Grisham as well as Harry Potter books. She’s also a member of my church so we share the same faith. She also lives in a cold climate so I figured she would enjoy a new cheery Christmas mug with some herbal tea. So for this basket, the theme was my friend and her interests and the fact that’s she’s headed into winter.

This is what I came up with.

First some books for her to enjoy reading this winter with a candle from the Dollar Store. I also threw in a Christmas DVD still in the shrink wrap that I somehow acquired through the years. I found all the books at thrift stores.

One of my sons had Terryl Givens as an instructor for a religion class last year and he said he was fabulous. So I was super excited to find a book that Brother Givens had authored with his wife, Fiona Givens, at Savers last week. I figured she’d enjoyed reading about “rethinking sin, salvation, and everything in between.” Sounds fascinating right?! I want to read it! I will be definitely finding a copy for myself.

Then I added an assortment of herbal tea packets that I already had on hand. I’m hoping she’s not a tea snob like the mom of the main character in the book Under the Egg, who has a penchant for gourment, expensive tea. These are just run-of-the mill herbal teas you can find at a regular grocery store. Plus a mug and some potholders I got at the Dollar Store. I also threw in some brand new gloves from amazon that came in a collection I bought that aren’t in any of these photos. The fingertips of the gloves are designed to work with touch-screen phones so I hope she finds that super useful.

Here’s what the finished basket gift looks like. I used a basket that I had found thrifting and tied it up with one of my many Christmas ribbons that I like to recycle.

I gave it to her early, last week, before she left on a long road trip. I won’t be seeing her until the spring. She was thrilled! So go thrifting for baskets and goodies to fill them up. You don’t even have to do any baking!

To encourage you more, here are some photos of ideas from YouTube thrifters, as well as the related videos.

Above, we see an example basket from the video below by Katie Scott of Salvaged by Katie YouTube channel. It’s for someone who loves to cook. Ms. Scott found a cookbook and paired it with some beautiful wooden bowls and salad servers, along with some decorative nutcrackers and a pretty plaid dish towel. She got them all at thrift stores! So festive!

Here’s a gift basket for a bird lover. This thrifter found a bird watcher book and added a decorative birdhouse, some birdseed and other bird stuff. When I find the video I got this screenshot from I’ll include it below.

Then Monica Bazemore over in YouTube shows her thrifting trips to make three book-themed baskets, shown above: Polar Express, Narnia, and a cookbook for Christmas. So, so fun! She added some pretty scarves to some of the baskets and non-thrifted edible items like spices, candy, and tea.

I love that she found a toy stuffed lion and a Narnia picture book, then bought some Turkish Delight to add to the Narnia basket! My married daughter was enamored by Turkish Delight when she was about 12. She found a recipe and made some. I know she would love this basket!

I’ve always wondered what real Turkish Delight looks like ever since my daughter attempted making it.

Watch her two videos below where she finds the items and then assembles the baskets.

Then here is another video to inspire you. Not all the baskets below involve books. You can do themed baskets of anything! The sky’s the limit! It’s so much fun to assemble these.

Merry Thriftmas!