All the CHK Frugal Christmas Blessings in one place!
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.
From Karen –
I’m already setting a small part of each grocery budget to cover all the food stuffs from Halloween candy thru New Years Eve Buffet. The idea is to snag as much on sale as possible.
Halloween Hershey kisses are in great holiday colors for Thanksgiving.
From Sylvia –
Host a Cookie Exchange! Here’s how: This is a private post because it is info from my Christmas Planner Ebook but you are welcome to it!
From Jennifer –
Make gifts… I loved when mom would crochet things like scarves for me as well as others. In fact, I am going to try to make scarves for my kids this year.
From Gail –
Buy used books (so many look like NEW at the thrift store, plus if you buy them at a charity thrift store you are “donating” to a good cause!). Tie a stack of them up for each person on your list & make a personalized bookmark for each person. You can papercraft them or crochet or even stamp with permanent ink (or write with Sharpie) on strips of leather for masculine bookmarks. Here’s a picture of a bookmark that fits over the corner of a book page. You just need a 1 1/2″ X 6″ strip of decorative scrapbook paper printed on both sides (so you can get 16 out of a 12×12 sheet!). Fold the strip in half, open it up, then fold each end strip to the fold mark to make the pointed top. You can tape the two end strips together or make some kind of medallion & glue it across the two strips to keep the bookmark folded.
From Nada –
This may sound cruel but remember that very young children don’t really need gifts. For my daughter’s first Christmas, she was only 7 months old and all we have her was a hand-knitted stocking. At that age the paper and lights are intriguing enough. We will be doing the same for our son this year as he will only be 2 months old at Christmas. They get enough from their parents and grandparents anyway.
From Rose –
I made lotions for my boys girlfriends last year. Coconut oil, vitamin E oil and essential oils. I also made gel air fresheners for the boys. They all seemed to like them.
From Pam –
For my Christmas baking I budget a certain amount each week (ie:$20) that I use to buy ingredients for my baking over a course of about 8 weeks. This way I get the ingredients I need but it doesn’t cost me over $100 in one trip.
From Amber –
Brown paper wrapping, I always let my kids draw on brown paper bags, or if I had it a roll of craft paper. We would wrap grandparent gifts in the paper