So, you know the drill...
The wife needs to sit down with the husband to discuss mishloach manos for this year... (costumes for the kids is a whole other thread )
You have to give to every neighbor who might pass by our doorstep and don't forget every 14th cousin, the "shadow" who works in your daughters classroom, who takes care of a special needs kid in the class who happens to be in the same class as your kid, in addition to all teachers and assistants who add up to 9 people and whoever is going to be at the Purim meal this year etc etc..
Don't forget the 17 two year olds in your son's playgroup and the Mexican maid who might see and be sad that she didn't get.
It has to be a theme or something "cool" and go break your head trying to figure out what to put in it that won't make you look "nerdy" or "nebbish".
So you sit down and start brainstorming and, no matter what options you choose, it comes out to literally hundreds of Dollars...
Can anyone relate?..
OK, so since people around here like saving money, I thought it would be a good idea to exchange ideas for mishloach manos to fit everyone's budget.
I'll personally share the one I gave out last year which was "cool" and relatively inexpensive (of course I cannot repeat the same thing this year cause that would automatically render it "uncool"), but I hope someone out there can benefit from the idea and I hope this could become a good brainstorming session and be useful for myself, as we as others who can use the info.
This is what I gave last year, I hope someone out here can use the idea, IIRC it came out to about $5 per mishloach manos.
I could not have said this better myself and I could not agree with you more except for the part about it costing hundreds of dollars. The whole point of actually sitting down and talking about it, is to avoid the hundreds of dollars part. :-)
Last year, since Purim fell out on Friday* - we (the royal we) baked cinnamon raisin and chocolate chip Challos and gave out 2 smallish Challos (one of each) in a nice bakery box with 2 small bags of chocolate chips and cinnamon sticks, bakers twine and a cute sticker.
We of course dressed up as bakers.
*Even without Friday, it is a nice thing for people to use at the Seudah.
The total cost was somewhere in the $16 range FOR ALL 60 Mishloach Manot we made!!!!! All the flour for the Challah came free from Whole Foods and the only costs were sugar, oil, chocolate chips, cinnamon and cinnamon sticks, twine ($1.86 at walmart), bakery boxes ($.05 each), and bakery wax paper ($5 for the box).
Granted it was a lot of work, and we literally baked for days straight, but they tasted awesome.