Have yourself a Frugal Little Christmas

... make your wallet smile!

Having a frugal Christmas doesn't mean being cheap it means being wise with your spending choices. It is possible to have a frugal Christmas and also have tons of fun! Trust me we do it at our house and fun is something we definitely do have.

The pressure from retailers and our children and family members can be overwhelming to say the least. Every where we look there is sparkling lights and decorations galore. Even grocery stores become a treasure chest full of offers and sparkling wrapping paper and chocolates.

The problem is that if you really take a look at the offers they are not really bargains or good deals at all. The buy one get one, 1/2 price sale is only good if you need two of the same item otherwise you are draining your purse on something that is not needed. These offers are great if you have a large family but if you don't it isn't really a good deal.

My best advice to stick to your frugal Christmas and most important stick to your budget. Also a frugal Christmas can be fun because it takes the away the taxing shopping away and puts a little creativity back into your life.

The Tree:

The most economical is artificial tree but I know some people love buying and cutting their down their tree every year. For us we use an artificial tree mainly due to allergies. Yep, I am allergic to Christmas trees, talk about humbug!

The Decorations:

So many thrift stores sell Christmas decorations and you can find some real treasures this way. Also if you have small children there is no greater joy then seeing their faces light up when they have made some Christmas decorations and you have proudly displayed them on the Christmas tree. Let's face it even if you don't have small children we all love to colour and what is more fun then spending time together colouring to ornaments for your Christmas tree.

Talk a walk through a forest and grab some pinecones and either dry them out and use them or spray paint them various colours to makes your decor. Add a little glitter to them to help them sparkle up any decor.

A favourite for ornaments among children are dough ornaments or even cinnamon dough ornaments. As a matter of fact this year we were unpacking our Christmas decorations and we found two cinnamon dough ornaments that were over 15 years old and both still smell wonderful and are in great shape. I highly recommend them. (recipe to follow)

For any candles you use... just use plain ones and add a ribbon it really adds a finishing touch. And here is my placemat idea for Christmas. Last year I hosted a table at church where we decorate for the adult Christmas banquet and I didn't have anything that matched so I went out and wrapping paper was on sale at Zellers and I am always on a budget. So I purchased some wrapping paper for $2 and that did 8 placemats for my table and it matched so nicely. I will hunt up the pictures I have of it.

Card & Wrapping tips:

One of my favourite things to do is to go to the local paper and buy the end of roll newsprint. They sell them really cheap. I use it as wrapping paper with some red and green yarn instead of ribbon. If newsprint is left over I just use it for my kids to draw on afterwards. Or if you want to have even more fun get out the pants and stamps and let your children decorate the paper for you.

For cards I recommend making them yourself or using a family picture and printing it and sending it out. I find most people just end up throwing out their cards. I know for my family I don't I keep them and scrapbook them every year.

Gifts:

I know for me, I have entered contests online and ended up winning some amazing gifts for my family. Not to mention these were gifts I by know means could afford to buy for my family. So bonus all the way around. Also if budget is a problem or as I say what budget, I have no money so therefore no real budget but that means I have to be very creative in what I do and can buy.

Making your own gifts from things around the house you already have. Bath bombs, Epsom salts for the tub, hand lotion, personal care items you name it. I watch the sales like crazy to get what I do get on sale and not to mention combine coupons too! Save, save, save!

I almost forgot we limit the number of gifts we give to people. We usually don't buy for the adults because well they really don't need anything and it is not in the budget. Secondly each one of our children only gets 4 gifts, a want, need, something to read and something to wear.

I will post a thread later on frugal gifts.

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Super Grandma

My youngest grandson frequently states that "Grandma can make anything!"  While it's nice to know he thinks so highly of me... it does pile on the pressure.

Of the three boys, Henry is definitely the most concerned with what he wears...  I wish I could find the photo of him with the bow tie!

For Christmas, Henry would like a green crew neck sweater (www.send-it-to-me.com) and specifically asked that Grandma knit him a red scarf with "tassels"....  not "fringe"... "tassels!"

So... I stopped by a craft store and picked up some red yarn and have started work on this red scarf that is to have tassels.

I haven't knit anything in 20 years but it's slowly coming back to me.... and I'm making it up as I go because, don't you know, I'm...

CHRISTMAS

The holidays are soon to start and you have to get ready to take some beautiful Christmas photos! Get your camera ready and charged, and any other equipment that you will find necessary, and start taking pictures. You want to start taking them a few days before the actual event. Why? Because it decorating the tree and the house, preparing the dishes for Christmas, trying out outfits for the Christmas party, preparing the actual party are actions that bring out the Christmas spirit even more and why would you want to miss out on any of those things. Also, capture the decorations, play with their forms and textures, add some, remove some, combine all kinds of specific Christmas things and put them together to create Christmas art. If you are holding the Christmas party at your place, you can god wild and create all sorts of little treats for your friends and family, such as a “do it yourself” photo booth – it`s very simple to do it. You just need a curtain (preferably in a Christmas color), a few decorations to add to it and there you have a portrait photo booth! Also, put some accessories aside like Santa hats or reindeer horns for your friends to try on and pose for you.

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Make sure the light bright enough so you won`t get the images in a dark blur – turn on all the lights that you have in that room in necessary or add some. Don`t worry, it will not be too bright because the decorations and the Christmas festivity itself will give you the warmth that you need for creating a holiday atmosphere. Photographing the Christmas tree gives you wonderful compositions to work with. Juts be careful when you photographing it with the Christmas lights on because the rest of the tree decorations may appear in a shadow. You can also choose some elements from it and photograph them alone. Use a soft focus and get as close to the branch as possible for that. Of course you can also use the zoom, but trust me, the result won`t be the same. The problem with Christmas is that you have too many colorful elements to capture, from decorations, to actual people and it will be quite hard to select a main subject. It`s not easy to make your picture look minimalistic if you can`t decide on a subject that is eye catching. If you want some inspiration for your future Christmas photos, here is a website on which you can find a lot of them and you will be able to make an idea of what I am talking about. You can download them if you want to get a closer look. Enjoy photographing the magical holiday of Christmas!

From "We" to "You"

One of my participants said:



“He thinks they [women] deserve whatever they have to do [at Christmas] because they’re the ones that make it that way.”



However, she goes on to say:



"And then you’ll start having to send Christmas cards that he thinks you should send. It always comes to the woman . . . he’ll say, “oh, we only need to send this amount of Christmas cards this year” and before you know it, he’ll be like, “did you send so and so a card?” If someone dies he’ll be like, “did we send a sympathy card?” “We” means “did ‘you’ do it?”

Christmas in July? Why?

Just for fun, let me take a stab at some FAQs before they even have a chance at becoming FAQs. We shall see how good I am at reading minds and telling the future.

1. Why would you waste your time writing about this? And who died and made you the Christmas Queen?

I am honored that you think of me as the Christmas Queen, but I assure you, I am not. I have my Ph.D. in communication. I have conducted many interviews and read countless articles about this issue. I absolutely adore teaching undergrads and writing scholarly articles, both of which typically go along with the degree. But I have always been passionate about extending what we teach and learn about in the classroom to people who might not otherwise connect with such material. Blogging seems like the perfect solution.

2. How did you come up with this idea?

One mother I interviewed said, “We [mothers] rack our brains all year to make it special.” Another said, “I just always want to make it so special so that they will always want to come home. I may not tell them [her family] that, but I definitely have that on my mind.” I heard that statement over and over and over again in my interviews. Mothers feel the need to make things special for their families so they will WANT TO COME HOME. This indicates that mothers do not feel worthy enough that their children will simply want to spend time with them. They feel that they need to do this in order to gain time with and affection from their families. Therefore, mothers are in the business of "specialness" and creating memories for their families. Why, though, do our moms feel it is their responsibility to CREATE positive memories for their children? Exactly the question I seek to answer on this blog.

3. Why are you picking on the most wonderful time of the year? It's just trying to be joyful.

Because it is the most idealized time of the year. And, essentially, it's like every day kin work, but magnified. It's magnified because the whole family holds the expectation that it will be the best day of their year. I also started to see the women around me struggle to get everything done. They were excited to see their families, but anxious about getting there. I realized there is a real need to understand the pressures of motherhood, particularly as it relates to kin work. I'm trying to make the holiday more joyful for moms, too.

4. Why do you hate Christmas?

I don't hate Christmas! I love it! It is out of sheer love for the holiday that I am choosing to write this blog. Fine, I occasionally say "bah humbug." But only when I feel the stress myself. How often is that? I won't reveal.

5. Isn't this a privileged problem? I think I saw a joke about this on "Things White People Like."

Yes and no. Are starving families worried about Christmas pressures? Nah, probably not. But that doesn't mean this isn't an issue worth exploring. In 2008, 81% of Americans identified themselves as Christians, and 93% of Americans celebrate Christmas (Gallup, 2008). In 2009, the census bureau revealed 307,006,550 people living in the United States. And do you know any one of those people who do not belong to a family? Me either. Additionally, women's roles in kin work haunts women from all classes (di Leonardo, 1987).

6. Can't you just be happy with all the progress women have made?

Women's roles in kin work bleeds into so many other issues. On a broad level, it reveals how we as a culture still treat and view women. Yes, women can now VOTE, work outside the home, play sports, and the list goes on! Huge progress has clearly been made. I celebrate these accomplishments every day. I am thankful for the many women who fought for all those rights. This blog is not meant to communicate that women still have nothing, can do nothing, and are nothing according to society. I simply hope to shed light on issues that have not yet been explored. Many things have changed, but in the realm of kin work, it's mostly remained the same.

Stay tuned for more.

The Third Shift

Christmas is hard work. I mean, eating all that delicious food is a big job. And all that merriment? It can really tire a person out.

Linda, a mother I interviewed, claims, “To me, Christmas is a bother;” unabashedly honest, she explains further, “But when it gets to be Halloween, I start thinking about it. And I dread it every year.”

Christmas is hard work. For women.

It won't shock most moms when they hear that women work in and out of the home an average of fifteen hours more than men each week. To put that in perspective, that's an extra month of 24 hour days a year, folks. Back in the 1980s, researcher Arlie Hochschild named all the extra work moms do on top of their regular work day the "Second Shift." It's the laundry, making dinner, organizing the kids' lunches, cleaning, and oh-so-much more. This is not to say men are completely unengaged with the daily chores involved in running a home, however. In fact, compared to generations gone by, men are much more involved in all these processes than they were.

Yes, the second shift still sucks. But I think we have missed a major piece in the discussion of gender and families. Ladies and gents, I present you with...

THE THIRD SHIFT

The third shift is comprised of what researchers call kin work. Kin work includes all tasks involved in maintaining relationships. It's the work related to forming and sustaining family rituals, such as Christmas or 4th of July celebrations. It's the correspondence such as phone calls, invitations, and thank you cards. It's documenting the moments by taking photos and scrapbooking. It's not only purchasing gifts for family members, but also brainstorming the perfect idea and then finding the right price. It's pretty much the who, what, when, where, how, and why of family connections and gatherings, both small and large. It's also the details of "Be sure you use dairy free butter in the pie crust because of cousin Laura's allergy." It's remembering birthdays and other days of significance for family and friends and then sending a card from the "whole family," even though George has no clue it's his nephew's birthday.

In its current form, kin work is quite dangerous because it is conducted so mindlessly. It is so engrained in our culture that women are hardly aware that they're doing it. Two large issues are presented with women's roles in kin work:

1. Our culture doesn't perceive kin work as work.

Women are still paid less than men, which can be attributed to several reasons, kin work being one of them. Part of the problem is that sending cards and gifts, talking to (or negotiating with) family members, and planning meals appears to be fun. And because family functions are (usually/hopefully) fun, why wouldn't all the planning be enjoyable as well? Or at least more fun than scrubbing the floors and toilets. Is it? Most people probably think so. I know I do. But it's still a form of work. It requires mental capacity and time that, if shared with men, might allow women to get ahead in their jobs (if they so desire). Or at least might narrow the "leisure gap" between men and women, in which men are proven to have much more relaxation time on weekends and after paid labor than women do.

2. Men don't do it. Because they don't know they don't do it. Because women don't know they're doing it.

Even more than household chores, kin work is done primarily by women. Unlike vacuuming and dusting, kin work is almost impossible to hire someone to do, because it involves a relational intelligence, history, and investment. This is also why it is so difficult to involve men in kin work. But it's also why it's so important. In order for any change to occur, men will need to get involved! And women will have to stand a bit of chaos for awhile, while disrupting the already well-oiled machine that is kin work.

It's not just about Christmas. Kin work happens every day of every year, and women don't love all aspects of it. This blog will explore kin work through sharing women's stories and connecting them to scholarship. Join me!

Sydney Town Hall, Lights of Christmas

The facade of Sydney Town Hall on George Street has been featuring 'A Sydney Christmas', a light projection show that displays Australian Christmas images.

Click here to view all participants of Mellow Yellow Monday

David Jones department store, Christmas

The Christmas display windows at the Elizabeth Street store of the David Jones department store. This year's theme is Christmas carols, featuring "O Christmas Tree", "O Come, All Ye Faithful", "Ding Dong Merrily On High", "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" and "The First Noel".

Click here to view all participants of Weekend Reflections

St Mary's Cathedral, Lights of Christmas

The facade of St Mary's Cathedral on Macquarie Street has been featuring Lights of Christmas, a light projection show running from 8th December to 25th December. The display captures the essence of Australia’s natural beauty during summer, featuring traditional Christmas colours and imagery inspired by the cathedral. A brilliant display on this building that dominates the skyline on the eastern edge of the city. This view is from across the square in Cook and Philip Park, where choral performances have also been held nightly on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

Click here to view all participants of Skywatch Friday