I love Christmas. I can’t wait to put up our tree and stare at the lights while I am snuggling under a super soft blanket. I love everything about Christmas: the lights, the meaning, the spirit, the excitement, and especially giving gifts.
I love giving gifts so Christmas just gives me an excuse. Unfortunately there are so many people to buy for that it is easy to get out of control. I have 2 parents, 12 siblings, 7 nieces and nephews to buy for on my side and on my husband’s side we buy for 2 parents, 3 grandparents, 2 Aunts, and a sister so between the two of us we shop for 29 people not including ourselves, coworkers, and friends.
There are a few things we have done to help keep these costs down:
BUY YEAR ROUND – if you haven’t started a gift box yet then definitely give it a shot. You can save a lot of money with a gift box. You can read about my own gift box here.
ENTER GIVEAWAYS – Around Christmas the giveaways will increase. Your odds of winning on a blog are pretty good. Some of the strictly giveaway or review blogs are a little bit tougher, but even those will give you decent odds compared to a “regular” contest. If you stick with the blogs that only do an occasional giveaway then your odds can be even better! My own giveaways seldom have more than 100 entries since I do not have a huge “sweepstakes” group following. But, the giveaways will increase in the upcoming weeks. Make sure to stop by and enter!
WRAP WITH CLOTH – The first year I did this I only wrapped my immediate family’s gifts using cloth, but last year I went all out! I asked my extended family before, but they were all okay with it. In fact, a few of them wanted their own cloth wrapping paper as part of their Christmas gift. This year should be a great experience since many of them have the cloth from last year and some have made their own.
I wrote a post on wrapping with cloth here. It explains the basic folds and how to make the paper. A great side-effect of the cloth wrapping paper is the Martha Stewart look. Seriously, my tree has never looked better. My own fears that the children wouldn’t enjoy opening them or that they would be easier to get into both turned out to be wrong.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
oh my gosh I can't wait till xmas! I love everything about it but I sure do spend a lot of money between the decorations and the presents and everything else. I hope I win some giveaways.
I can't wait to start putting the giveaways up!! I think I am going to put my tree up early this year just b/c I am so excited, LOL. I mean like a week or two before Thanksgiving then we can decorate it on Thanksgiving.
In my defense, the years that I do not put it up early things get busy and it ends up going up late…. So I think early will do it!