12 Impressive Diwali Gifts Under Rs.500 and 9 Ideas for Small Gifts: Spread the Joy on a Shoestring Budget!

Diwali is a special time on the calendar where Hindus come together to reminisce about the past and to unite in the welcoming of the forthcoming year. The Festival of Lights is the welcoming of the good, the fortune and the light and deterring the bad, the dark and the misfortune. This meaningful time brings friends and family together to feast and to pray in ancient traditions. With the help of your local florist, you can create carefully designed bouquets, fitting for this special time. With vibrant colours to reflect the festival of lights and sweet scented fragrances to reflect the essence of the diyas, these flowers bouquets provide the centrepiece presence your feast requires. Send your friends and family beautiful, bright and festive colourful flower arrangements this Diwali because flowers are the perfect gifts for any occasion.

Gerberas are bright flowers with many positive meanings. Send your loved one a bouquet of mixed gerberas. Beautiful pink lilies and cerise roses are the perfect flowers for Diwali. Like most flowers, the different coloured roses have different meanings. Red, for example, means love, where purple means royalty. Send your loved one this beautiful arrangement that expresses all things good and beautiful this Diwali. For something a little more elegant, immediately brighten your loved ones home with this arrangement of roses, gerberas and greenery. Flowers that are as beautiful as the thought behind the gift. With a variety of meanings and symbolism, you can’t go wrong with sending your loved ones a mixed carnation bouquet.

Express your love, affection, hope and dreams for your loved ones by sending them a captivating bouquet filled with colourful carnations. Carnations stay fresh and beautiful for long, so long after the Diwali celebrations are over, the carnations you sent your loved one will still be fresh, fragrant and beautiful.

A profusion of traditional goodies means the festival of lights might almost be called the festival of sweets. So what is eaten during the festival? The immediate answer is sweets – and plenty of them. Indian sweets, known as 'mithai' are a cross between snack, dessert and confectionery. If there's one thing that captures the Indian culinary psyche, it's mithai. Little morsels are nibbled throughout the day, on their own, or as part of a meal alongside savoury items.

Chickpea flour, rice flour, semolina, various beans, lentils and grains, squashes, carrots, thickened condensed milk or yoghurt are normally used as base ingredients; to which cashew nuts, almonds, pistachios, chirongi nuts or raisins are added. Fragrant with sweet spices like cardamom, cinnamon, cloves or nutmeg, they're further flavoured with saffron, rose or kewra water, and silver or gold leaf.

While laddoos, barfis and halwas are universally popular, some of other items like mawa kachori, moti pak and sohan papdi are more regional specialties requiring elaborate preparation. It's customary to exchange extravagantly decorated boxes of mithai, dried fruit, nuts or silver serving dishes with family and friends.

Diwali snacks, made from chickpeas, rice, lentil and several other varieties of flours, are seasoned with different combination of spices, sesame seeds, fresh fenugreek leaves or coconut, pummelled into assorted shapes and usually deep-fried – though nowadays both mithai and snacks are available in low-fat, low-sugar and baked versions. It's common for family and friends to drop around to each other's houses with boxes of homemade snacks. And this makes mithai a great gift for Diwali. You can use this opportunity to show off your culinary skills or simply order them.

Instead of going the traditional route, why not try something that will shed a rosy glow in your loved one’s kitchen. There are plenty of funky copper vessel vendors you will find on the internet thanks to the blessing of online shopping that can provide you with the most unique gifting options.

Designer earthen pots are also a cool gift idea for this Diwali. You are good with the brush, you can personalise them maybe with a little painting, so that they can be used in multiple ways, as show-pieces, as flower pots, as flower vases, or just as simple knick-knack containers.

Some cool kitsch table lamps might be a cool, rather unusual gift as well as an interesting way to light up the halls and bedrooms. Unlike other Diwali lighting, they can use it all year round!

Some interesting diya sets might help them spread the Diwali joy and also light up their homes. They can be earthen, but in cool, interesting designs, or thy can be metallic and slightly edgy looking. A set of such diyas should be a pretty cool, minimalist yet useful gift to give this Diwali.

If there is Diwali, there are going to be candles for sure. You can win this round of Diwali gifting by gifting some cool and funky looking candle-stands. But take care that the design of the candle stands goes with their home décor theme.

Sweets are a part of every Diwali, but instead of going the much-walked upon route of traditional sweets, why not gift a box of cupcakes? And if those cupcakes have a Diwali theme running through them, then kudos to you for nailing the spirit of the festive season.

Ask any uncle what he looks forward to the most during Diwali, and it will be those fun card games that are a riot of laughter and joy. Which is why you can’t go wrong with a cool card games set. If you don’t want to show up with only a pack of cards, you can also bring other interesting Diwali themed knick-knacks – like magnets, keychains, etc.

Diwali follows right after Dhanteras, which is why there is such a surge of people rushing to buy jewellery presents. Set the mark a little different. Instead of buying your mom or sister or any other amazing woman in your life just another piece of jewellery, why not gift her a designer bracelet watch?

Every house needs some amount of artwork to adorn their walls. You could take a cue from that and gift your loved one a piece of beautifully painted artwork to hang up on their wall. Even better if the painting is something that is meaningful to your relationship. It would add character to their home, as well as make them smile every time they look at it and think of you.

Gift hampers are versatile gifts that can be give to virtually anyone! There are so many options available that you can customise the gift to the receipent's preferences. You can choose from fruits, healthy snacks, organic products, tea/coffee and chocolates, to name a few. Many sites offer a wide range of options under Rs. 500 so you should have no difficulty in finding something perfect for your needs. We have here a chocolate-special gift hamper from the GourmetBox that contains a delectable setof products such as Dark Chocolate Flavored Popcorn, Flavored Chocolate Spread, Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt Waffle Chips and Chocolate flavored Health Bar. These come packed in a gift box bearing a personalised gift tag. Available on the site for Rs. 475.

As mentioned earlier copper vessels are known to be a great way to be healthy thanks to the many benefits the metal provides us. This travel friendly sleek looking bottle is made of pure cpper and is leakproof. Designed for your benefit, the Yoga Pure Copper Water Bottle,bottle purifier with Kitanu Magnet uses non-toxic plastic to ensure your safety. It can be bought on amazon.in for Rs. 378

Beauty kits are a good gift options for family members or close gifts but not acquaintances or colleagues! For your sister or a good friend, you can give gift sets that combine a good selection of quality products. Consider this Vaadi Herbals Exotic Fragrance Premium Herbal Handmade Soap Gift Box which has five kinds of handmade soaps - Enchanting Rose Soap, Heavenly Lavender Soap, Indian Khus Soap , and Lemongrass Scrub Soap. A wonderful set of soaps that is sure to lead to glowing healthy skin. Available for Rs. 255 on Amazon India.

This bird is a symbolic representation of positivity according to vastu. It has been made out of wood with perforated designs making it look unique. The bird is in a sitting posture on a slightly roundish platform. It makes a great element for gifting purposes. Give a memorable gift that they will treasure forever by personalising it by the name engraved on the gift (in form of printed transparent stickers or printing on the box) and premium gift wrapping. It can be bought on bontoon.com for Rs.440.

A beautiful light can transform any ambiance and setting. Such a charm is light and this Metal T-Light Candle with Detailed Bird Design is quite an extravaganza which can elevate any space. With a black metal body and a bird on top, this candle stand makes a great decorative piece. It can be ordered on bontoon.com for Rs.490.

Home decor items are a popular Diwali gift. You can give wall art, showpieces or desktop decor items. We have chosen here a photo frame that will add a vibrant touch to any room. Hamdmade using mango wood and patterned in waves, this frame is of golden colour and measures 19 x 1 x 24cm. Availabe on HomeSake for Rs. 499.

Kitchen utlitlity items,cookware, or anything serving sets are useful gift to give on Diwali. There are several options under Rs. 500. For instance this mug set has 6 bone chine cups that are great for daily use. Elegant and simple these make a great gift for friends, or even coleagues. Order this set from Amazon for Rs. 398.

On Diwali, gifting divine figurines is a great idea as it communicates your good wishes on this festive occasions. People typically give idols of Lord Ganesha and Goddess Laksmi this day as they are both venerated and prayed to for bringing wealth, prosperity and good luck. This Ganesha statue on marble chowki is a wonderful option for elders in the family or your boss. Check it out on PepperFry for Rs. 389

Amazon.in Gift Cards are valid for 365 days from the date of purchase and carry no fees. They can be redeemed on all products on Amazon.in except apps. The beneficiary will just have to apply the 14 digit code (under scratch card) on amazon.in/addgiftcard and add the gift card balance in their Amazon.in account. This balance gets automatically applied at the time of next purchase. There is no cap on number of gift cards that can be added to an account. By presenting a gift card you stay in your budget and the beneficiary gets to buy what they need the most. It can be bought on amazon.in in denominations of Rs. 10 – Rs. 10,000.

If the gift is great, why bother with gift wrapping? Or the other way, if the gift isn’t great, why wrap it, right? Wrong! Gift wrapping isn’t just about covering the gift in decorative paper. It’s about going one step further; it’s like the icing on the cake or a beautifully decorated dish at a restaurant. It adds another dimension and is the final flourish that completes a good gift. You’ve spent days hunting for the perfect gift for the dear one, wither friend of family. Now comes the time to the gift you carefully shopped for. You must have felt the anticipation, as one wait for the recipient to open the gift and the expression on their face when they finally see what you got them. It is truly a magical moment. Perhaps, this is why gift wrapping came into existence, to build up the anticipation of opening the gift.

Creative activities like rangoli making provide avenues to create something special for festival. It not only stands out to be a stage for the family to make something and enjoy but also create memories that can be shared. The modern day digital world also enhances the experience of art and craft by providing plenty of creative ideas that can be picked up from the internet and tried at home. You can start off fresh or you can get inspiration from something you find over the internet and develop that. Either way, you will be having quality time with your family.