Jim and I spent many years trying to get family members to donate to our favorite organizations (like Heifer Project) rather than purchase holiday gifts for us. It's not that we didn't like gifts, but we didn't NEED anything and our house overflowed with stuff already.For us, holidays are the best playing games and enjoying time with family and friends. We really hope that Ranger will also appreciate the community aspects of holidays more than the stuff or the volume of stuff.
So, we're trying to give each family member a personally significant, reasonably priced gift and not fall prey to the last minute "one more thing" add on gifts.
Here are a few of our 2007 choices:
For my dad, our geek grandpa: a Rhinoskin CASE for his techie cell phone/PDA (not the phone itself).
For Jim's dad, our fisherman grandpa: a personalized CASE (reading GrandpaJones) for his fishing rods.For our 4-year old niece: a ceramic name necklace.
and for Jim's mom: a ceramic photo tile pendant with a favorite picture of Ranger.Does your family have a holiday giving strategy? What gifts (or kinds of gifts) are you giving this year?
4 comments:
We love to donate to Heifer! Those all sound like highly personal gifts. Good job!
We do a secret santa just among the four of us. I have a love hate relationship with things. I love getting my kids stuff and making them happy, but I hate that they have so much stuff. I feel like this way everyone concentrates more on what they're going to give than what they're going to get. As far as our extended family, we still have to get presents for everyone...I think I'm giving a great book.
We're doing a Secret Santa gift exchange, which means a lot less stress for everyone involved. The kids, we've been told, are excluded from this because everyone loves shopping for them. I just hope no one gets carried away!
The girls usually get the fruits of my year-round clearance trolling. They don't usually get new clothes throughout the year, just Christmas, Birthdays, and Easter. I also like to make things for them. This year I'm reconning a chenille bedspread from Goodwill (from half price day even) into a sweet robe. Miss B will love it (so I don't mind the oodles of chenille dust in my sewing area).
My favorite gifts to buy though are "from" my dad and to my mom. My dad hands me his money and I pick out the stuff I wish I could afford for mom. It's nice to listen to her or watch her when we shop and then go get those things for her.
But I love to find a gift that means something to the recipient. Last year I got my mother-in-law a shadow box/treasure box to save things she and the girls find when exploring. It's become a game to find something special to put in the box.
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