A Fun Way to Give Money

Trip was invited to his friend's birthday party this week. With very limited shopping here in town, it's hard to find good gifts, so I decided to give the birthday boy some cash. I didn't want to just put it in a card, though so this is what I came up with:

Randy was having an Avengers party and I had been able to find a pack of six Avengers pencils, so I wanted to incorporate them into the gift. I also had a baseball mug on hand that I thought he would like. I took the dollar bills and accordion-folded them. Then, I rubber-banded each bill to a pencil and fanned it out.

I filled the mug about half-full of dried beans to hold the pencils in place. I'm sure that popcorn kernels or rice would work well too. Then, I covered the beans with candy.

I also taped a star with a birthday message on one of the pencils.

Trip was very excited to give Randy his gift and actually requested to have his picture taken with the present and then kept trying to get in the pictures.

I'm looking forward to creating other variations of this idea. Although pencils are great, I'm thinking that I could also use skewers, straws, glow sticks, honey sticks, markers, or any number of other "sticks" to hold the bills. I could also substitute ribbon, twine, or hairbands for the rubber bands. I have a couple more mugs in my stash, but jars, vases, glasses, bowls, cups, flower pots, or buckets could all make great gifts too. I'd love to hear your ideas for other variations on this fun gift!