Frugal & Meaningful Holiday Challenge? - Page 2

[philomom]

Originally Posted by limette

Have you read "Unplugging the Christmas Machine?" I love that book, it really helps narrow down your focus on the holidays.

I was coming here to suggest that, too. Also, The Tightwad Gazette books offer many homemade gift recipes for friends and neighbors, teachers, etc.

[Amys1st]

Originally Posted by philomom

I was coming here to suggest that, too. Also, The Tightwad Gazette books offer many homemade gift recipes for friends and neighbors, teachers, etc.

One thing we like to do is make up holiday cookie trays. We LOVE baking and cooking so I make up a chocolate etc tray of home made goodies. This way, if you will not eat it, take it with you to your party or your family can eat it themselves. One year, as I handed it to the secretary at my dd's school, she said, ohhh did you make the buck eyes again??? Eyes all wide!
(Basically, peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate.) I guess her DH is a huge fan. I usually make up about 10 trays after buying the holiday dish the year before on clearance. Or I buy cookie cans discounted and store in the pantry and use those as hostess gifts, neighbor gifts etc.

A few parties we bring a bottle of bailys or something of the sort. After halloween, we will start watching for those type of sales.

DH's family has started a bizarre but amusing and fun tradition for holidays of a brother bringing a bottle of a favorite whiskey or tequila etc for everyone to sample. Usually everyone gets a shot glass full of whatever is being shared and the person sips it while everyone shares their thoughts. Only once, did someone commit a fauspaus and down a tequila dh brought to share, his oldest brother hasnt lived that down... Its usually passed out after dinner or right during appetizers. If done right away, there is usually a load roar by the time dinner is starting. Depending on who is present, that could be a nightmare or fun... So DH will be on the lookout for a special bottle in early November. This is much more fun than opening gifts.

Another tradition his family started about 10 years ago is Xmas around the world. We pick a country and plan the holiday feast around what the country would eat on Xmas. The non celebrating countries we pick meals around a grand feast. So far we have had an Italian Xmas (easy for me), MExican, Spanish (twice, that one was fun), New England, New Orleans. Note, some were american but more regional. Plus a few our family style xmases voted by my FIL.

[tinybutterfly]

Originally Posted by lolar2

When you talk about spending money on gifts, is that just for the immediate family or does it include extended family?

Also, does it include "gifts" that are things like a new toothbrush, that you have to get anyway but they go under the tree since it's December?

What kinds of fancy food do you tend to spend a lot on?

I include extended family that we buy for in the amount we spend. But we only buy for the parents, dh's sister, my brother and one great-aunt and great-uncle. We have LOTS more family, but they live far away, we don't celebrate with them and don't buy gifts for them.

Also we host dinner Christmas Day. And I include stocking stuffers, Christmas cards when we send them, the postage for the cards, etc.

I don't include the meal we serve. That comes out of our regular grocery budget and we know just to bump up the amount for food at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We get a turkey or ham, make some sweets we don't normally have, make a relish tray, etc. Family brings some food, too.

We have a number we try to stay under ( would be a lot for some, not so much for others) and as long as we are near that amount it's fine.

Mostly I am trying to keep it reasonable AND lessen the stress. I'm trying to streamline it all, keep the good stuff and ditch the things that just add more to do to my "To Do" list or add extra expense and are not really fun or worth the money.

Originally Posted by Amys1st

Another tradition his family started about 10 years ago is Xmas around the world. We pick a country and plan the holiday feast around what the country would eat on Xmas. The non celebrating countries we pick meals around a grand feast. So far we have had an Italian Xmas (easy for me), MExican, Spanish (twice, that one was fun), New England, New Orleans. Note, some were american but more regional. Plus a few our family style xmases voted by my FIL.

This sounds fun!

[proudmamanow]

wow thanks so much everyone

There are so many great ideas here, and I will definitely check out those books from the library.

For our budget, when I say $1500 (and to be completely honest, I may have lowballed that a bit), I include: tree, decorations, hosting some kind of get together, gifts for the kids, gifts for each other (usually less than $50 total), gifts for grandparents & auntie & 1 cousin, special food and some teacher gifts (for activity teachers, we homeschool so really dw should get the teacher gift, lol) etc. .

And I'm glad to know I'm not crazy for planning in August

We typically do a lot of homemade gifts, and one of our annual traditions is to shop at our local 10,000 villages sale: hosted by a local church, it sells fair trade handcrafted items and food from around the world, and there are often some amazing deals. We often make sugared, spiced nuts or shortbread.

We have sometimes done a cookie exchange which is a nice way to entertain at the holidays, people seem to like it, I may do one this year--though it does lead to crazy amounts of cookies!

I really really like the PP who mentioned the giving special events as part of the gift. I also think we will aim for art supplies this year as a main focus, as the girls always need these and are both extremely productive little artists.

It looks like MIL will likely be joining us this year, which actually will help in some respects as she typically does a much more frugal Christmas than my family. The only challenge with that is that she is very shy and doesn't like to socialize with our friends much.

Another of my dilemmas: I LOVE real trees. I LOVE the smell, LOVE cutting them down, etc. But...a friend gifted us her old fake tree last year, and it is a very nice one. We used it last year because it seemed like a waste not too, but I missed the real tree....of course depending on where we buy it, it can set us back between $30-$60. And of course the fake tree lasts a lot longer! hmmm


What do people do on Christmas Day itself? Last year we opened gifts and spent a lot of time relaxing and enjoying them, and then went out for a toboggan with the girls in the afternoon (there's a hill beside our house) and then had a scaled down turkey dinner in the evening. I really liked the relaxing part of it, but I think because I'm used to a full on extended family event (I come from a big family) it felt kind of lonely, kwim? Anyone do anything different on the actual day? Christmas Eve we have a tradition of getting together with some good friends for a fondue...


I do love thinking about Christmas

[sweetjasmine]

[caiesmommy]

I totally forgot to mention that I got a job at H&M which gives me 25% discount for everyone in my household and for any gifts I purchase. Including sales items. SOOOO that will be taken full advantage of for sure! I'm also lucky b/c dh works for a music store, so when the reps come in with t-shirts/and little stuff, he ALWAYS brings some straight home and puts it into the "gift cupboard" and that really takes care of my 17 y old cousin.

We do bake cookies to donate to dh's grandmas church cookie walk. Make homemade cards to send out. Make decorations to put on top of presents instead of bows. I find all these activites don't cost much and they do help keep the kids entertained when we get snowed in which is PRICLESS! We've already started collecting pinecones to decorate!

Last year we just put up a small(suppose to be used outside) 3f fake tree and let ds decorate it to his hearts content but I REALLY missed having a big one. So I'm hoping to get dh to suck it up and buy a real tree. We'll see LOL.

Xmas eve the dc get new pjs. I like the look of the pictures LOL. Usually loosly holiday based, like a plaid pair. So ds can hand them down to dd, and they last longer that way.

[proudmamanow]

oh yeah we do the pj thing too....sometimes dw sews them depending on how ambitious she is feeling.

Oh and we are also pretty outdoorsy, we ski, skate and toboggan...so long as it's not below -20!

great stuff! keep it coming!

[Turquesa]

Originally Posted by proudmamanow

Another of my dilemmas: I LOVE real trees. I LOVE the smell, LOVE cutting them down, etc. But...a friend gifted us her old fake tree last year, and it is a very nice one. We used it last year because it seemed like a waste not too, but I missed the real tree....of course depending on where we buy it, it can set us back between $30-$60. And of course the fake tree lasts a lot longer! hmmm

Same issue here. I get around this buy spending on pine-scented candles, and boiling a pan of water spiked with piney-scented essential oil. Normally I'm too tight to scent up my house, but I'll splurge during the holidays. No, it's not the same thing as a fresh tree, but it'll do in a pinch, and it's a lot cheaper!

[lakeruby]

This is a great thread!
I really need to work on this too-- I have a bad habit of overspending on the holidays. It would be awesome if I would start saving up NOW and have a budget limit to stick to.

We have a big Christmas Eve party, but I've never thought to make it a potluck. That would help a lot with the cost, as I tend to go crazy making awesome food (my favorite flourless chocolate cake (2), a pound cake, candied bacon (organic, local), pappy's eggnog (a huge batch costs about $150 to make!-- going to make a 1/2 batch this year), etc.)

I'd love to work with my DP to set a $$ limit and maybe just buy something big together for the house, rather than opening lots of presents. I just love presents, though, and have a hard time with limiting myself in that area.

Maybe we should take a mini-vacation or something to get out of the house, so that we're not sitting around on christmas morning wishing we were opening presents....this will be a good year to experiment.

[Siennaflower]

Originally Posted by proudmamanow

-An advent calendar where we do one special thing together each day, rather than giving candies, stickers, dollar store toys as we have done in the past.

I like this idea!

Originally Posted by confustication

Gifts- I try to do one 'big' homemade gift for each child. All three are getting Waldorf-style dolls this year... I need to start sewing soon. The boys will probably get some more blocks and maybe a play kitchen this year- all homemade. My oldest will take more consideration as she'll be nine and the leap from little kid to big kid is hard!

I want to make both girls a Quilt this year. I need to get moving on this, it's already August!!

Originally Posted by tinybutterfly

One thing my kids really enjoy, even as old as they are, is a family night with fun board games during the holiday season. Add whatever fun food you all like ( popcorn and hot chocolate, pizza, Chinese takeout, eggnog and cookies...) and it's a party.

I know my dd1 especially would love this. Great idea!!

Originally Posted by Ruthiegirl

We try not to travel too much -- we see the local dance studio's production of The Nutcracker (so sweet and the whole cast is local kids), we go to our local town's holiday parade, we walk around the neighborhood to see everyone's lights...love it all and we spend a lot less time on the road dealing with hectic traffic.

I was thinking about taking dd1 to the Nutcracker this year. I've only seen it once myself but I loved it.

Originally Posted by Pumpkin_Pie

This year, I want to do more decorating of our home. I have tons of Christmas lights that I want to string up everywhere. I also want to hunt for pine cones and acorns to make some more natural decorations to hang throughout our apartment too. I am vowing to have the computer on Pandora Christmas stations for all of December too. I tend to forget to play music so often, and I LOVE Christmas music.

I was thinking about doing this as well. I have a lot of Xmas decorations that I haven't brought out in quite a while because we've just focused on getting the tree done. But this year I want to go all out and really decorate and make a Winter Wonderland. And I think dd would love making a popcorn string for the tree. I used to make another string out of some red and green colored cereal but I can't recall what brand, I might look around and see what I can find. And a big YES to Christmas music. In the car, too.

A few other crafty ideas I may try-construction paper rings to count down between Thanksgiving and Christmas, sewing matching Christmas pjs, knitting Harry Potter sweaters (like the ones Mrs. Weasley made for Ron and Harry with their initial on the front), making wrapping paper with plain paper and stamps, learning how to make bows and curly cues out of ribbon, making handmade ornaments (at home with clay or at a ceramics shop, maybe), making a collage out of Christmas scenes, making a gingerbread village, making photo place mats to commemorate the year.

[gothnurse3]

For the Advent calendar...my computer crashed and I lost the link( or I would love to share)...but last year I made little envelopes and filled out little slips of papers into them of things to do everyday.
Ex:
1) curl up on sofa as a family and watch a Christmas movie
2) drive around to see the light displays

I gave them to my girlfriends and they LOVED them.

[proudmamanow]

that's lovely, Angela--too bad you lost the link! But I would love to start a list like this for us all to use.

Some of my ideas:
-go to the Santa Claus parade
-decorate the tree
-make a gingerbread house
-take cookies to the neighbours
-collect food & bring it to our food bank

etc. etc.

[honeybunmom]

Last year I started scaling back. Step 1 was having the family travel to us! One idea I saw (probably on here), was using the Advent calendar to open 1 item each day that is needed for the gifting or holiday crafting you are doing. I'm going to try to implement this idea this year and mix it in with activities.

I am happy to say that I bought my SIL's present in the after Christmas sales last year. She loves pajamas and I got her a great pair of Christmassy/wintery pj's for $7 on clearance! I've used Zoolily for my nephew and Hyenacart for my niece. Anything else they get from me will be hand made by me.

It'll be a handmade Christmas for my kids, too, unless we decide to get dd a bike. But a bike in Chicago in December wouldn't be much fun!

[lolar2]

OT, but Honeybunmom, whenever I see your username I crave these.

[limette]

Do a search on mothering for Christmas or holidays. There are some really awesome (long) threads with hundreds of great ideas.

I've posted this advent calendar tute on previous year's Christmas threads, here it is again.

Felt Envelope Advent Garland