Five years of Christmas together under our belt. The first year was good – big, lots of presents for all. After that our money troubles really started to form. Two jobs still didn’t allot too much for Christmas. It went down to buying for Brandon, and being happy with that. When Riley and then Angel were born, we satisfied ourselves with a few small presents for them since they wouldn’t remember and attempting to make Brandon’s Christmas’s big.Â
Last year we managed to pull together the money for a big Christmas. Piles of presents under the tree, wrapping paper everywhere. Then getting together with teh family and MORE presents there.
This year we could do that again if we wanted to. We could spend hundreds of dollars and put piles of presents under the tree – toys that would be destroyed by el-distructo (Angel), toys that would be ignored and forgotten like every other toy in the house. Boxes of clothes that would get an “oh” from Brandon and thrown aside.
But we’ve talked about it…and we don’t want to do it. We’re going to let Brandon know that our plan for the holiday this year is this:
1. The kids will each get one ‘big’ gift this year. For the girls it will be something smaller, for Brandon it will be one big gift. He can give us some options and we’ll figure it out.
2. Brandon will pick a charity and we’ll donate $50-100 (we haven’t set the amt yet)Â to that charity in his name.
3. Handmade gifts will be encouraged…even if it’s something silly.
4. Archie and I will get gifts for each other this year – but we’ll have a spending limit of $20 and it should be meaningful.
5. We will find something charitable to do for the family.
It just suddenly hit me the other day that just because we HAVE the money doesn’t mean we need to SPEND it…not on a bunch of stuff that will go by the wayside or get torn up. If we put some of our money and time to things and people that need it we’d appreciate it more in the end.Â
Now I just have to get some motivation inside of me to have the patience to sit down with the kids and do crafts with Christmas in mind…and use THOSE to decorate my house instead of spending tons of money on decorations from the store.
Such a good idea.
We always make most of our gifts for relatives but we tend to splurge on the kids but not this year.
Great idea! I keep going through toys and donating what we can because they don’t need anymore than they have.
It’s a hard battle that takes a lot of commitment to keep the “I want” monster away and teach kids to count their blessings.
Good luck!
Cheryl
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I’m working on homemade gifts this year too, for financial reasons, but I’d like to keep it that way in the future. Although I might have to learn how to knit something besides a scarf. We always had one BIG gift at our house, then a few smaller ones. I love the idea of donating to a charity in people’s names, especially if you find one that really matters – ie I donated money in my sister’s name to the children’s hospital that she had surgery in when she was a baby.
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