It’s Beginning to Look…

Wow.  How’s your holiday shopping going? Mine’s done. Sort of.  I may purchase one more thing, but then again I’m not stressing over it.

This year looks very, very different than years past. There will be about ten presents under the tree. I thought I was going to stress it, but I’m not. I thought for a moment about buying inexpensive items and wrapping them so that it wouldn’t look so sparse, but then I decided not to.  I feel like this is a really good lesson that I know I needed to learn and that I hope I’m effectively passing along to my children.  You see, we had a couple of years of plenty.  Really plenty.  This year?  Not so much.  And to say that we are not alone is an understatement.  There are so many people who are struggling that in comparison, we’re pretty ok.  We’re renting a house that we love, in a great neighborhood, we have wonderful friends, enough food to share (although we’re stretching it with pasta and rice a lot more), my husband has a job (although he’s working harder than he ever has for much less money – but who isn’t?), and we have choices.

We’ve been forced, this year, to analyze things; to really decide what we want to spend our resources on.  We’ve learned to make our own bread as well as certain condiments, controlling how much we spend and what we put into our bodies.  We’ve learned to repurpose things that weren’t being used and if we can’t find a purpose, we give it away to someone who can and those are good things (channeling Martha just a bit).

Another example is Christmas dinner.  We usually have a crown roast, or a beef tenderloin for dinner – which usually costs a ton of money for a dinner for four people when you add appetizers, sides and dessert – but not this year.  This year we’re having an open house, inviting everyone that we’re friends with and requesting that they bring a dish to share, we’re providing a dish as well as olives and crackers and cheese – we’re saving a fortune and I bet we have a better time than we ever had when it was just the four of us.

All in all, I’m grateful for what this year has taught us.  I’m looking forward to the economic upswing whenever that might appear, but we’ll be ok ’til then.

Happy Holidays!

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• Things I’d Really Like…
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• The Day After
• Much Better
• All Souls Day