sorayay

How about a chi flat iron? or a vanity for her room? Those things are nice for girls who are just starting to care about how they look and boys. The only other thing I can think of in that price range that hasn't been listed is concert tickets...

You don't really need the book set to start this tradition. I read about it online 3 years ago and our elves now come every year. All we started with was a letter from Santa, telling us they were coming. It said that the children won a contest and the elves were coming to learn more about children since there aren't any at the North pole. The next week, the elves were in the fireplace. We constructed a passport, but it got to be too much trouble to keep up with, so we dropped that. Each night they go to sleep with the kids, but in the morning they are found somewhere else, sometimes in the middle of playful hijinks. I read about it on Magical holiday home... but we've even gone so far as to make facebook pages for our elves to communicate with Santa. They often leave notes on our big whiteboard for the kids...sometimes Clean up your room, I tripped in there! and sometimes, today is a good day for Christmas carols, sing loud! One of our elves is a peeker and unwrapped a gift that was under the tree. They even stole the car one night and came home with happy meals which gave them tummy aches. It's really kept our season magical.

Last year I had a nephew who only wanted cash. I took 50 one dollar bills, some double sided removable tape (You have to buy the removable kind) and then taped the dollars together end to end and rolled it into a huge roll. Then I put the roll inside the cardboard part of a roll of toilet paper and wrapped up the toilet paper. It was a huge running joke that he had a "poopy" gift that year! It took him a long time to separate the bills and then his wallet was bulging, but it made for a lot of laughs. If your family isn't into potty humor, you can do the same thing with a Kleenex box (the dollars pull out) or Maybe even one of those clorox/lysol wipes boxes... And when I was in high school my best friend got one of those lifesavers books. Her parents had slipped the cash between the roll and the wrapper. They had to search the rolls really carefully before they found it, but it was a delightful surprise.