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Well, woosh bang! Christmas is around the corner. Here in the Fletcher home, we are stuffing stockings and exchanging names (the kids do) and trying to keep surprises hidden. Even the stocking stuffer stuff is hard to hide!

We also still have our home/property on the market (it's been 7 months), a very, very, very busy Mighty Joe (he's our brain-damaged child), and a business year to wrap up. I'm betting your house has a lot of the same going on!

I don't need to tell you how expensive stockings can become, do I? Man, a few $10 items and suddenly stockings become the main gift! I just can't go there with 8 kids. I want them to have useful, fun, and super great stocking stuffers, but they just have to fall into the frugal category, too.

Super Frugal Stocking Stuffers

Orange or other piece of fruit (It's traditional!)
Mini First Aid Kit: Empty Altoid tin filled with cotton balls, band-aids, dollar store tweezers, and chapstick.
Portable Lego kit for the car: Glue a small baseplate to the top of an empty Altoid tin. Fill with Legos.
Photos printed out just for them. Our Costco prints photos for .13 each!
Mini photo albums that they can fill over the next year, or with that stack of .13 prints.
Mini Kleenex packs
New fun toothbrushes (you knew I'd go there, didn't you?)
Mini dollar store notebooks
A favorite bottle of soda: Especially fun for kids who don't get to drink sugary stuff a lot (that's ours) and that bottle takes up a lot of stocking real estate!
Glow sticks: This link is 100 glow sticks for a great price!
Homemade lip gloss (coconut oil and Kool-Aid)
Mini bags of any treat: chips, cookies, dried fruit, nuts, cereal
Puzzles from the thrift store: We've been buying them for $1 per puzzle!
Necklace kits: Put beads and string in a baggie for them to make their own necklaces.
Coupons: The good 'ol standby. Movie night, you-pick-dinner, favorite dessert, no chores, front seat privileges, etc.
Hot cocoa packets
Homemade bookmarks, or a bookmark kit with card stock, scrapbooking odds and ends, buttons, and ribbons.
Melt crayon pieces into an old muffin tin or candy mold to get new, fun-shaped crayons.
Dollar lip gloss and nail polish (Ulta and Avon are good for these).
Craft odds and ends kit: I found a bundle of colored craft sticks at the thrift store for a quarter that I know my 8-year-old will love.
Recycle used make-up compacts by gluing construction paper in appropriate colors as the "eye shadow" and "blush". Give them a dollar store make-up brush to go with it.
Make a mini engineering or builder's kit: find odds and ends from the garage and pair them with duct tape and glue.
Stickers
Packs of gum
Bubbles
Homemade play dough
Mini sewing kit: Fill an empty Altoid tin with thread, needles, small patches of fabric, and tiny scissors
A brand new box of Crayons
Bug-catching kit: Recycle a Mason jar by punching holes in the lid. Fill with a few twigs and some sand.