When you don't know how to give money as a gift...

As people get older it gets harder and harder to give them gifts (at least that's how it is in my family since all of us kids are older now) and because of this my mom has gotten really great at coming up with cool and fun ways to give money.

But, before I actually get into this blog post I can't exactly give my mom ALL of the credit. She does search on Pinterest first so I will try and leave links here if I can find them.

The main thing that inspired this post was my (not so) little cousin's 16th birthday present. Since she's not a very girly-girl and doesn't really enjoy fancy jewelry and isn't have a big party we decided to give her money but with a fun twist. Of course my mom took to pinterest to try and come up with the perfect, yet funny, gift for her and this is what she found:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/407716572499388406/

We found 16 small gifts (mostly small, joke-type of presents) and wrapped all of them up and ordered them in a specific way, making the money number 16, the last gift to open. It's something we know she will love and also something funny for our whole family to enjoy watching her open.

For the same birthday girl, from our grandparents, my mom found this awesome lollipop bouquet (this was a combination of Pinterest, YouTube, and us kind of doing it as we went along) using Dum Dums, tissue paper, colorful paper (actually colorful gift bags which was our mistake that ended up working well) and money as the leaves. It looks so cute, in my opinion, and I know she'll love it.

Another gift that was a big hit was this money "shirt" that we made for another cousin (I would say this was the one that started all of these ideas). I can't exactly remember what birthday but I think it was another 16th birthday (but this time for a boy who was definitely not having a big party).

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures that we took but here is one from Pinterest.

And, last but not least, we have the biggest joke- money giving gift in my family: the money tree!
This started with my grandparents making this for my cousin, then my brother, and then my other cousin. Since this gift started at an age that I had passed already (problems of being the oldest) I had missed out on this gift but for my 22nd birthday I finally got my money tree. Since I haven't taken it apart yet (even though it's been almost a year...) here is a picture. My grandparent's just took branches from their own yard, put it in some sort of pot/base, and then tapped 22 (or whatever age) $1 bills onto the branches. Definitely a fun and funny way to give money. I mean, who doesn't want their own money tree?

I know there are a ton of different ideas throughout Pinterest but these are just the fun and creative ways my family has done it over the years.