Hey, friends!! So, the time is coming when Christmas gift shopping kicks into high gear, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite Christmas gift ideas with ya’ll. I’ll likely be doing a few of these posts, each with different gift categories. Today we’ll start with Kitchen and Kids. You’ll likely find something that fits perfectly with someone on your shopping list, or even a little gift for yourself. 🙂
For the Kitchen
You should’ve known that the Frugal Farmer would’ve started with this category. 🙂 It’s no secret that I love to cook and bake, and I can tell you that cooking is much more fun when you’ve got the right kitchen tools to go with your own great cooking tips. Here are some of my favorites:
1. Amco Rub Away Bar
For under $10, you can have a whiz of a kitchen tool that will benefit nearly every cook. The Rub Away bar works like a bar of soap, rubbing away odors from garlic, onion and the like within seconds! No more smelling like garlic for several hours after you make that awesome Italian dish. Just “wash” your hands with this stainless steel bar, and odors disappear.
Wolfgang Puck 10 PC Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl Set (Red)
I loved this set so much I had my mom get me one for Christmas. The bowls are sturdy, and the rubber bottoms ensure they won’t wobble around as you’re mixing. There’s nothing quite as useful in the kitchen as a quality set of mixing bowls, and for under $40 with free shipping, you can’t beat the price!
3. KitchenAid KHM7210ER 7-Speed Digital Hand Mixer with Turbo Beater II Accessories and Pro Whisk – Empire Red
What better gift to go with the Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer than a matching hand mixer? Or, for those not accustomed to spending $300 on a hand mixer, this hand mixer is the perfect blend of style and quality.
4. EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale, Silver
There’s nothing so helpful in the kitchen as a decent kitchen scale. This highly rated, sleek-looking scale weighs in at about $20 too, making it a fancifully frugal gift for the kitchen gourmet.
5. Clara’s Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes from the Great Depression
This is one of my go-to books for cheap recipe ideas. Entertaining as well, Clara’s Kitchen shares witty and fun stories about Clara’s life growing up during the Great Depression. For under $15, this one’s a great stocking stuffer too.
6. CUTCO Model 77 Super Shears I raved on my post about my 30 
favorite cooking tips about how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my kitchen scissors. But I can only recommend the Cutco brand. Cutco knives and scissors come with a lifetime guarantee, free sharpening at any time, and awesome customer service. At $118 or so, they’re spendy, but they’ll last forever, so they’re well worth the price.
For the Kids
1. Curious Chef 17-Piece Measure & Prep Kit
Is this adorable or what? This real cooking set is perfect for the budding chef. It’s not a toy cooking set – it’s the real thing, complete with quality cooking and baking pieces, wrapped in the safety features for kids that you’d expect. For under $25, this is the perfect gift for the child who loves to bake and cook.
2. Running Free
Running Free 2: Lightning’s Escapade
Running Free 3: War: A Life Changed Forever
If you’re looking for good, clean adventurous fiction for your 8-12 year old, look no further than the Running Free series, authored by none other than The Frugal Farmer daughter. Our Maddie authored this first book at 11, and the other two at age 13. I wouldn’t recommend them to you if I didn’t think they were the perfect gift for kids who love to read. Available in both Kindle format and paperback.
3. The Rookie (Full Screen Edition)
One of our all-time favorite movies for kids and adults alike, The Rookie does not disappoint. A story about dreams, goals and the willingness to “go for it”, The Rookie is an uplifting, feel-good movie for anyone who dares to dream.
4. LEGO City Fire Station 60004
My kids never tire of building different scenarios with the Lego City Building Sets. The intricate details of each set are amazing, and the fact that the child can build the set from the ground up (with easy-to-use instructions) or making up their own design means that these sets are huge for encouraging independence and creativity in your child. The Lego City building sets also come in a variety of sizes, hobbies and professions. There’s fire and police sets, a garbage truck set, a tow truck set, a camper, and much, much more.
5. LEGO Friends 41039 Sunshine Ranch
Similar to the Lego City sets but geared more toward girls, these sets are also super popular with kids and encourage creativity big time. Along with the Sunshine Ranch (my personal favorite 🙂 ), the Lego Friends series has a high school set, a city pool set, a bakery set, a juice bar set and much, much more. Get the kids on your Christmas list a gift that encourages creative and interactive play.
6. Game of Life
If you really want to get your kid on the building wealth bandwagon early, buy him or her the game of Life. What better way to learn how to manage money and life and have fun at the same time?
What are your favorite gift ideas for the kitchen? For the kids?
Need to check out the Amco Rub Away Bar, never heard of it but sounds useful. Now that our kids are all teenagers I miss the days of hitting the toys store for Christmas shopping. The endless hours building legos. Any type of headphones/ ear buds are always a good gifts for kids.
Great idea about the earbuds! Yeah, I’m making sure to enjoy these days as I know the kids will be grown up before I know it. 🙂
Great ideas, Laurie! Personally, I don’t like cooking, never have, but Jay loves it! I’ll share this post with him when he gets home. Happy Thanksgiving, Laurie! 🙂
Interesting that Jay loves to cook! The guys in my family love to cook too. Rick always brags that he was an awesome cook when he cooked for a living, but somehow he always ends up leaving the cooking at home to me. 🙂
If Jay did that, he’d be a skeleton by now. 😛
His mom was French and she probably knew he would someday marry a non-cooking woman, so she wanted to be sure he knew how to feed himself & well!
I am truly blessed. He is an amazing cook. I think he could be a gourmet chef! 😀
LOL, funny!! God certainly knows what He’s doing when we let Him guide our spouse making decisions, doesn’t He. 🙂
The cooking set for kids is great! Over the last year or so, we have gotten Will more engaged in the cooking process. I think it’s important to teach your kids to cook just as it’s important to teach them to save since it’s basically the same thing. You save SO much money when you can cook for yourself.
SO true, Shannon! I love that you are getting Will into cooking. Our kids all like to cook, but one loves to bake. It’s been tough encouraging her creativity in that area and keeping on track with my weight loss goals at the same time, I have to say. 🙂
I loved Legos as a kid…still love them! And the Game of Life…wow, didn’t know they still made that. I remember learning the lesson that your career/salary really made a big difference in that game. Great motivation to get a good education and a good job.
I know – isn’t it a great game?? Educational, and the kids are having so much fun they don’t even realize it, LOL. I’m sure your cute little guy will love Legos as he gets older – they’re a never ending source of creativity!
I love the bowls. All of mine are crappy hand-me-downs or cheap ones that are all mismatched. Ah being single and apt living!
When I was young and single, I bought a set of those classic white ceramic mixing bowls with the blue stripes, and I still have it today, over 20 years later! This will be the first set of mixing bowls I’ve gotten since then, LOL. 🙂
The Rookie is one of our all-time favorite movies. Great message and clean. My two youngest kids have really gotten into Legos in the past year. The best thing is that they are not tied down to what they are supposed to build based on the set instructions. They are using pieces to create their own constructions.
Glad to hear you love The Rookie too! And I totally agree about the Legos – they really do encourage creativity! Our kids love coming up with their own versions of the set’s basic design.
Thank you for the list. I am currently in need of a hand mixer and Kitchen aid is the brand I’m looking for.
On my dream list is the Kitchenaid stand mixer – they are so awesome!
Great shares Laurie. I am slowly…very slowly…getting into cooking more as I try avoid the vast majority of processed foods.
You go, girl! I am confident that as you experiment and practice more, you’ll become a fabulous cook. 🙂
I have never heard of the Amco Rub Away Bar. I cannot stand how my hands smell after I rub my yummy seasonings into my meat. For people who love to cook like me, this is a great product for cheap….Great idea.
I know, isn’t it?? I thought it was a novel idea. 🙂
That rub away bar looks like an excellent idea … especially since I’ve been eating a lot of garlic;0)
Life and LEGOS … what more could a kid want;0) My son still loves LEGOS at the ripe old age of 12!
We love garlic here too: this is why I love the rub-away bar. Otherwise that smell can linger for days, despite many rounds of soap. LOVE that your son still loves Legos: I will still, on occasion, find our 15 year old daughter playing with them too. 🙂
The kids cooking set is so adorable! This year I think our daughter is mainly getting clothes since she’s too little to really “get” Christmas, but next year we will start looking for more fun things like this! I am drooling over the kitchen shears- I really want to get a pair of those! I think I might have to put that on my list of things I want to buy when our student loans are paid off. Great list!
Isn’t it? Yeah, smart idea to go “necessity” for this first year; she’ll never know the difference and it’ll save huge on your budget. 🙂
Great list! My cousins love Lego Friends.
It’s funny to hear you say that, DC, as all of my cousins are well past the Lego stage of life. 🙂
Hi Lauri, do you think my 89 year old mom would enjoy Clara’s Kitchen? She usually enjoys reading people’s memoirs about growing up during the depression since she also lived during those times. I think she’d be more interested in stories rather than recipes.
Oh my gosh, I think she’d love it! The book is filled with stories of her life during the Depression. I’m sure it would bring back many memories of her own life during that time.
I’ve got kitchen knives on my Christmas wish list this year. I’d like to have other gadgets too, but that might have to wait till I leave the confines of tiny nyc living 🙂
Good for you, Stefanie! A decent set of kitchen knives is a wise and worthwhile gift. You’ll likely use them more and more the older you get.
I would have died for that kitchen set when I was younger! Now that I’m using real food, that anti-stink bar is catching my eye 😉
LOL, funny how things change as we get older, isn’t it. 🙂
I am giving my wife the KitchenAid KHM7210ER 7. She is now studying culinary. I hope this product is perfect blend and she likes it. Thanks for the suggestion Laurie.
Smart gift, Jayson, and I think it’s awesome that she’s studying culinary!!! That is on my dream list of things to do. 🙂
My favorite gift in a long, long time is my mother’s old Kitchenaide stand mixer. She finally upgraded, so I got the old one from the mid-70s. Works like a charm and so many good memories of her baking bread with it when I was a child! lol We also did Legos and the Game of Life, both of which I adored as a child. My sister and I had buckets of Lego pieces from Goodwill that we used to create an entire table-sized city. 🙂 Ah, so many memories…
What a great gift, Mrs. LoL! This is what I love about those Kitchenaid mixers: they seem to last forever! Glad to hear you guys were fans of Legos and the Game of Life too. It really is the simple pleasures that bring smiles, isn’t it?
I love your list! And I also love to give LEGO as gifts..I think it’s a perfect toy to develop a kid’s mind.
I agree! Legos are so fun, and educational too!