Wednesday, December 15, 2010

A gift to remember...

So usually when you hear a family who homeschools, it usually means one income family. And that's us. So for all you one income families this article could be for you. For the past 5 years, Christmas is always tough to budget. We have, in the past, made a mistake using our credit cards to buy gifts. Big mistake ever! And for the past couple of years we have been determined to use only cash and whatever we can afford to give gifts for the season. So far, it's been worth doing. It takes discipline and patience for us, but we know it's for the best. Anyway, I have come up with some ideas that helped us cut the budget down from spending too much for Christmas. Here are a few that we've done personally:

1. Make your own gift tags
2. Bake special treats for the kid's friends/playmates/neighbors
3. Only give store bought gifts for special people: for us, babies/toddlers, and our own children.
4. Plan to give one specific gift for every family/relatives. For example, mediate family receives a special calendar that contains our past year monthly pictures. Relatives can have a box of homemade goodies.
5. Handmade gifts
6. Another thing we've done is write a newsletter style as a special annual update of your family. This has been special for us. We want to take advantage of the year ending to complete it with a special note from our family informing our loves ones how God has blessed us the past year.

Each idea that we've tried so far has been very special to us.

So baking goodies is one tradition that we've started every Christmas. And this year, I'm trying french macarons, packaged in my very own handmade paper box.

The only thing you will find with this way of Christmas giving is that it is a lot of work compared to just buying the gift from a store.  But what I say to that, it's working doing!

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