75 Days Of Frugal Christmas Blessings

For the next 75 days, visit Christian Homekeeper to learn about frugal ways to make your Christmas bright and cheerful!

I’ll be sharing links, ideas, instructions and more from the ladies at the Christian Homekeeper Facebook Group ….. Here are this week’s offerings………..

From Nada:

My tip for today is to download and print off Flylady’s Holiday Control Journal. I do this every year. I find it very helpful in organizing my Christmas holiday and keeping me in budget. She usually suggests doing it the day after (American) thanksgiving but I will be juggling a new baby by then so I’ll probably start it early this year.

http://www.flylady.net/i/pdf/hol_coj.pdf

From Margery:

Look at thrift stores for nice coffee cups and run through the dishwasher and then use as a base for homemade gifts. I like to fill mine with hot coco mix, or tea bags.And a few pretzels dipped in chocolate and rolled in sprinkles. A gift I often give to teachers.

From Lori:

One of the ways that my husband and I changed the way we looked at Christmas and therefore changed our Christmas “habits” (ie spending/gifting) was to do daily advent devotionals. Back when we started this in 1990 our Pastor gave us a weekly guide for daily readings, candle lighting, etc. By changing our hearts about Christmas from worldly to Godly it gave us the freedom in our hearts and our heads to only spend $10 total on Christmas gifts that year. We spent $5 each on one another and we didn’t spend an extra penny on any other family members or friends, yet every single person was given a gift. (we had friends and family that had fruit and nut trees that needed picking, so we picked and picked and picked and made baskets from multiple layers of folded paper grocery bags and gave everyone beautiful fruit and nut baskets with cinnamon scented pine cones that I collected and made. They were beautiful and free and all of the got used, not tossed in a drawer or closet to be forgotten. This changed our whole perspective on Christmas. Christmas for our family is about celebrating the birth of our Savior. We do not center on gifts. We each get one gift (relatively small) and our stockings. We have friends that say “oh, but your kids get gifts from their grandparents, etc” even if they didn’t it wouldn’t change for us. We want the focus on Christ not presents.

From Sylvia:

I like to use natural items for decor at Christmas. I cut small branches of fir, cedar and magnolia to decorate with, also nandina berries. I spray the nandina berries with hairspray to keep them from falling off the twigs and keep them shiny for several weeks.

From Helen:

I make lots of gifts and find great bargains at thrift stores. This year I am making pillows and blankets for the dolls in my two youngest granddaughters’ dollhouses and getting some great books like new at the thrift store for 69 cents each buy 4 get one free. And if I go in Tuesday I get a 20% discount!

From Melissa:

I try to make homemade gifts for my children’s SS teachers and homeschool COOP teachers. This year they will be receiving zucchini pineapple preserves and a loaf of homemade bread. Last year they were gifted apple butter and homemade bread.

From Jennifer:

One thing we do all year is save the comics from the newspaper. This is used at Christmas as well as birthdays as wrapping paper. If you subscribe to the newspaper anyhow, this means you are getting to read it as well as recycle it.

Come back tomorrow for more Frugal Christmas Blessings! And stop by our Facebook Group and join in the conversations there:  Christian Homekeepers on Facebook