I like totem poles. 

Once my brother Paul was having a birthday. He was turning 15, I think... Big into girls and music. I was totally broke and had nothing to give him. 

The morning of his birthday, I was out shopping for business supplies at work (back when I was the admin for the family business). I happened across a back-to-school sale, where they had packs of pencils for a penny a dozen, limit 2. So I picked up two packs and took them back to the office. My brothers and I crowded around my desk with a fine-tip sharpie, doodling on the pencils to personalize them for Paul. We wrote funny messages teasing him about girls he liked... Stuff like that. One of the pencils was a smiley face totem pole. 

That was five years ago. He still has those pencils. He's afraid to use them because they will be gone. 

Two cents. It doesn't cost much at all to say "I love you".