Posted on 11/05/2009 5:22:26 AM PST by Crusher138
With the economy in sad shape I have heard reports of people changing their gift giving habits this year. As the owner of a company that produces custom gifts, I would like to hear from Freepers what plans they have for gifts - both personal and business - this season. Are you planning on giving more, less, or the same? Are you cutting back on who you are giving to or are you giving to the same number of people, but changing the value of the gifts? Are you planning on giving more "home made" gifts? If so, what kind?
Eat good and lotsa hugs. We’re all grown up now. Things change.
Cash and gift cards for food and gasoline for my recently laid-off son. :(
Handmade tokens (food, crocheted hats, mittens, scraves, fabric tote bags, etc.) for close friends and other family members.
Salvation army donations. Not planning on spending much for gifts.
It is Christmas as usual at my house and for my family. Kids all live in other states, all flying and/or driving home for Christmas. No changes from previous years, gifts, food, drink...THEN, when the kids all leave on Sunday because they are all good responsible young adults and have to get back to their jobs, the wife and me head to Florida!
Christmas has always been about accentuating the thought which comes to me daily, the cosmic dynamic of the moment in which God came to earth, in a baby, to win us back.
Over the past 10 years, my giving has been almost exclusively precious metals. For non-family, they get a single silver eagle (current value approx $20). For children, they get a whole stack of 20 eagles ($400). It’s the kind of gift that people appreciate when they get it, and even more 10 years later. That can’t be said of any other gift I can think of.
Christmas has always been about accentuating the thought which comes to me daily, the cosmic dynamic of the moment in which God came to earth, in a baby, to win us back.
Over the past 10 years, my giving has been almost exclusively precious metals. For non-family, they get a single silver eagle (current value approx $20). For children, they get a whole stack of 20 eagles ($400). It’s the kind of gift that people appreciate when they get it, and even more 10 years later. That can’t be said of any other gift I can think of.
Christmas has always been about accentuating the thought which comes to me daily, the cosmic dynamic of the moment in which God came to earth, in a baby, to win us back.
Over the past 10 years, my giving has been almost exclusively precious metals. For non-family, they get a single silver eagle (current value approx $20). For children, they get a whole stack of 20 eagles ($400). It’s the kind of gift that people appreciate when they get it, and even more 10 years later. That can’t be said of any other gift I can think of.
We have cut back giving gifts for family adults - now we draw names for the extended family. We always give to the local Angel Tree and Toys for Tots; Wife makes jewelry for the women; we give gift cards (Home Depot, WalMart, etc.) to the men. We ask almost exclusively for gift cards. I have been giving myself ammunition all year. ;-)
I will be making a charitable donation in the names of gift recipients to a charity called, The Human Fund: Money for People.
As both a child and a Grandmother, I will be gifting my 2 children, 6 grandchildren and brother with items from my home. I have a fruit bowl that I think my oldest grandson and his wife would like. I have a bagpipe chanter that I think my brother would like. I have wrought iron wall decoration for my daughter in law. I have jewelry for my granddaughters and books for my grandsons. My daughter is hard to buy for, but I’m sure I have a pair of earrings she’ll love. My son in law was born on Christmas, so he’ll get two presents and two cards. Probably books from my library or my collection of historical textbooks.
My parents don’t want anything, as they’ve got everything they want to dust. However, I am thinking of sending them something like a wreath for the door from LL Bean, or something similar. Nothing “live” to water or “stuff” to dust. That’s their rules.
My BFFs will get gift cards for places to eat out. They’re not into “hand me down ‘heirlooms’” from their BFF.
We are doing what we did last year. We will adopt a family that is suffering due to job loss.
You can say that again ....
;-)
(sheepishly): sorry for the double post.
Food is a good gift. Everyone I know eats.
We have honey bees. Honey and candles are on the list.
My kids are getting older, so I'm buying (ugh!) flannel fabrics (with discount coupons) to sew pajama pants. T-shirts can be used to match the pants. I knit, so knitted house socks will complete the set. It's cheaper than buying store made by far. If they want i-pods, they can buy their own.
Another good idea is giving someone a steak dinner. Buy a frozen steak, throw in a potato and a bag of corn, maybe add a little something for dessert, and put it in a decorated box.
Corn bags are toasty warm. Sew a bag about 1 foot square. Sew rows in the bag, and fill the rows loosely with popping corn. Then sew a seal along the open edge. Put this bag in the microwave for about 1 minute, and the bag stays really warm for hours. It takes the chill out of a cold winters night.
Food is non taxable, too. If you go food this year, you can do it without supporting big government.
Cash for the kids (less than last year but it’s still what they need) and homemade treats for business associates. We’re cutting way back.
Hopefully spreading Christmas cheer to my wife. :>))))))))))))
Homemade treats, local Ohio products like wines and Amish cheeses, cash for the big kids plus popcorn poppers and rice cookers. The little kids and grandbabies are getting some toys, PJ’s and books.
For my grown kids.....clothing, kitchen items and gift cards. For out adopted granddaughters new winter jackets for a big gift, books, and a toy. For their parents a house gift, probably from Pier 1. My husband disconnected last year’s gift from the computer and it sits collecting dust. I am reluctant to spend money on him.
Times are tough, I will not be spending much this year.
MMG - made me google
We’ve always kept CHRISTmas low key. Usually just a couple gifts for each of the kids. I spent half of this year unemployed and will start a new job living out of state and apart from the family in two weeks, so I’ll be driving home just in time to celebrate.
We buy all year long now. Years ago, Christmas was a rejuvination of a wardrobe and that one special gift.
The theme was always "It's for the kids" and it is...some parents are starting to come to their senses about spending hundreds for the kids.
Cash for the daughters for new business suits (It constantly amazes me what a womans professional business suit costs). Small gifts for my nieces and nephews (normally some tech item as I am on the bleeding edge of technology ;-))not to exceed $100 each. Food for the extended family get together (Out of the 4 kids in the extended family - only two of us have “real” jobs)and lastly some last minute panic item for my wife (I have a friend that makes very special cutting boards out of “end grain”).
Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret. - Robert E. Lee
This economy is going to be the hardest on the little kids. Adults understand what's going on, but the kids don't.
Little kids like security things, even though they don't seem to get overly excited about them at first. Eventually, the security items will become their favorites.
Home made quilts are great. They don't have to be fancy. Just make them with the kids old clothing. They'll relate to it. They'll feel safe with it.
Kids like candy. It's not that good for them, but it's temporary for the holiday anyway.
To a kid, quantity seems more important than quality. Small dollar store items in Christmas stockings will fool them every time.
My plans are to enjoy being home again for the first time in a while, without the threat of leaving (unless I find a job that isn’t telecommuting.)
Gifts to be gotten:
My Father: He’s will be happy enough with the fact that I’ll hopefully graduated college, and he gets a raise :D. And a pair of homemade pajamas pants.
Mother: Slippers
Brother: A new pair of homemade pajama pants.
Grandmother: Slippers
We’ve changed our gift-giving big time over the last couple of years and this year will be the same. I have a very large Irish Catholic extended family. Tons of siblings, aunts uncles, cousins, etc. We draw names out of a hat and buy one gift(under $50) for one member of the family. The only people getting multiple gifts are my own kids.
We’ll do a big pot-luck dinner the day after Christmas, exchange gifts and drink some holiday cheer.
We have had slimmer CHristmases the last three years.
But we get sort of a theme. One year it was “homemade”, one year it was warm apparel. One year handbags for ladies/sweaters for men.
THis year I am thinking either kitchen or things you need but can’t make yourself buy that are cheap,,ahah.
I need better bathtowels, like two big ones and can’t bring myself to shell out. An extra set of king sheets. A new electric toothbrush. Socks!! That kind of stuff.
It is our “the economy is crashing Christmas”
Oh my, what a great idea! To start giving away my stuff that I know my kids want.
I have a big collection of ivory handmade scrimshaw jewelry, just gorgeous from antiquie ivory and set silver, pendants, pins. Cats of all kinds on ivory and the kids drool over them. I have given away pieces to special people over the years but the girls mightlove those. I am giving away my silver to one daughter and have so much that another will get it.
And crystal,,I don’t use the damned stuff anymore and the prices are out of the sky. I hate to handwash it and use it once a year,,maybe this year I will wrap it up and china!!
All the things we routinely got as brides and now the kids cannot afford. And I don’t use and why wait to die, rather see them love it now.
And my grandfather’s tools, old 18th century stuff,,the grandsons might love, they love carpentry. ANd great great granny’s bonnet and my grandmothers only silver spoon left, she lost her husband and saved one spoon, a big serving spoon. I use it every CHristmas and think of her and tell her story to the children.
You have opened up a great world for me!!!! And what fun to tell the stories and know they will pass on to the next generation.
My grandson who is 14 saw hubbys turntable from when we got married. He spent what was a huge amount of money on it and he didn’t know what it was!!! Surely some kid would love a turntable and a good collection of records.
They all have kindles so I am afraid the book collecting may end this generation.
THanksFor the idea!!!
I plan on wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah.
We have already decided there is no money for presents for us or anyone though we will make our annual donation (though much smaller) to a local charity.
Please, wish Mr. G good luck on his job interview this morning.
Exactly. My entire family comes to our house for Christmas dinner. I usually serve a large ham. Not this year. It's going to be turkey I find on sale after Thanksgiving.
We grow just about everything else (fruits, vegetables), so that's free. All it takes is a little elbow grease. We even grow our own nuts (hickory, and black walnut for baking). We froze our extra eggs already.
I do have to by flour for pies and cookies, though. This year, I'm going to wait to buy it on sale somewhere ( a penny saved is a penny earned).
Gift limits lowered. Sewing gifts, especially for the kids. Coupons, sales, rewards, really watching for bargains. Might try e-bay. The adults and some of the older children on one side of the family have drawn names for awhile anyway.
Since we’re on a fixed income, with no children, I’d like to get out of giving gifts to in-laws kids. Husband insists not only on gifts, but that we “not be cheap.” Sigh.
I make DVDs of all the pictures we take throughout the year of family gatherings and set them to music. We have given these to our siblings, parents, nieces, and nephews for a few years now and everyone looks forward to them. It doesn’t cost a lot of money but does take some time to put them together. It’s a labor of love and at our Christmas get together we put a copy in and let everyone watch on the big TV. It’s fun to relive the events of the past year as a family.
Probably donate to Operation Call Home for the troops.
http://www.590klbj.com/community/OperationCallHome.aspx
Your great-great grandmother must have a heck of a story.
why not write down what you know of it, maybe with some Xeroxes of relevant documents (if any survived) and make a little book of it (several copies) and give that for presents?
With photoshop and self-printing you can do a nice cover.
CG, you are most fortunate your children have expressed an interest in your family treasures. I refer to the kids of today as the "throw-a-way" generation. They tire of stuff easily.
I think passing things on before we are gone is a great idea because we can feel the joy they get from receiving it especially from someone they love.
Maybe you can find a special person who would so appreciate your turn table and albums?
sw
I have a picture of my great-granny carrying a cane fishing pole down by the river. You can't see her face at all for her bonnet but the bonnet is how I remember her. Thanks, I needed that memory this morning.
I do it all the time - senior moments.
;-)
Why wait? Yesterday, I was in our local Wal*Mart Supercenter and they had Riverside Turkey on sale for 40 cents a pound. (Limit 2) My 14 pd Turkey cost $5.60!
sw
They had some serious bonnets,,went down the back of the neck, cotton, about 200 years old. Guess that is why they had great skin. My mother had skin like a 20 year old when she died at 84,,never in the sun at all, wore hats, before days of good sunscreen too.
I love those old stories. wish I had the gun my grandfather shot a man with, on Main street, killed him and everyone applauded. He had threatened him one too many times. This was rural south when you didn’t shoot off your mouth about killing peopld and there were none of the crap you have to do here now when people threaten you. Dont know where the gun went but it was a shotgun.
You can freeze eggs??? Who knew! They last forever in the frig, I have heard a year or more.
I am very fortunate, my girls all finally grew up and love my stuff.
We joke that we are going to visit our tables and chairs and beds when we visit,,they have furnished houses with out stuff and grandparents stuff. They treasure the grandparents furniture. They had better furniture in the old days,,beautiful handcarved cherry and mahogany tables, just gorgeous.
I love visiting my mother’s furniture at my daughters house in Texas, my furniture in Atlanta and my carpets in Baltimore.
I just thought of another idea,,an exchange gift year where all we do is give each other stuff we don’t want. Like I need twin bed sheets for the guest room and don’t have them and the kids do. And one daughter has three coffee makers and no espresso machines and I have two espresso machines and no percolators.
I have my grandmothers enamel coffee pot, the old fashioned drip one you can’t find anymore and that is what I use when I mae more than two cups. I need a percolator and could cast off one espresso. And big pots,,I have too many and daughters too little.
I love skinny Christmases,,more heart I think than buy everything Christmas.
Get copies of that pic and put in in a frame and any daugters will put it in a place of honor! It is a metaphor for “keep truckin;/sooner or later you will get a bite”
My daughters love those old old pics of their female ancestors especially if accomanied by a story.
My grandmother had no schooling, married young to an old man who was born before the civil war, was widowed in the 1918 flu epidemic and left with one dime, one silver spoon, some pretty cut glass and three young kids. She educated them thru college, never allowed a male visitor but did have lunch with the town doc. She self taught herself to read, got a harp from Sears and learned to play it well, and taught herself math, calculus, physics, English.
She took care of me when my Mom was in grad school, lived with us and when she died I was two. I quit walking and talking for months so great was my grief.
I treasure every story of that wonderful woman of whom I have no memories but from all I hear, I am much like her. She was only 61 when she died but her life was extraordinary.
My kids don’t enjoy the old stories and they roll their eyes at all the keepsakes. My house is full of old family stuff, ha! I have a couple of grandpa’s guns but there’s a couple others that I wish I had. One was the one that shot the heel off Sam Bass’ boot. The story goes that great-great grandpa was sort of a friend of Sam’s so when the sheriff’s posse was suppose to shot him, grandpa shot low hitting his boot heel and Sam got away. The one I really want is Mr. B’s great-great grandpa’s that he carried at the Battle of San Jacinto when he was in the scouting troop that captured Santa Anna. It was around a few years (ok, decades) ago but was sold out of the family and no one seems to know any more about it.
Oh, here’s a funny family gun story. There was a guy who lived at great-granny’s (not the sun bonnet granny) boarding house who made a deathbed confession (though he lived) that he was John Wilkes Booth (obviously a bit nutty) and gave granny a pistol wrapped in a newspaper with headlines about the Lincoln assassination. The guy had always been suspicious acting so granny had the gun and the newspaper buried under the house. Grandpa said he saw it years later but didn’t know what ever became of it. The boarding house is still there as is granny’s house and the house grandpa grew up in so who knows what one might find if they dug around a bit.
Great stories, loved the boot shooting.
How old are your kids. My daughters are two in their forties and the younger is 33. The older ones are the ones who love the stuff and stories. When they were in their twenties and early thirties and setting up house, I offered them invaluable things,,antique persial rugs, real hand woven ones that were gorgeous and they sniffed at them. I offered them china, crystal silver, and they sniffed saying ‘nobody uses that stuff’. Well now they love them and all their friends are inheriting silver and crystal and they crave it!!
They keep growing up just when you think that is it,,I raised some silly girls, suddenly they are acting just like me, just ten years after I grew up.
Maybe yours need some more time and mostly have to start buying furniture. You pay alot for crap nowadays. They just don’t make affordable furniture unless you go to the Carolinas or the AMish country where the furniture is made to last for ten generations. All they can afford now is chinese stuff and it falls apart.
Holidays for our family have always been more about being together. There is no greater gift for us to be with those we love on the holidays. We are blessed with a lovely family. There will be no sadness that we cannot afford the latest or expensive gifts but we will be grateful that we have food on the table and a roof over our heads.
And then the day after we will go right back to fighting those b*****ds that made it so that we couldn't even afford to buy our children a small gift this Christmas.
We quit the gift exchange last year. Just a “white elephant” thing that was actually more fun. Grandkids get the usual stuff though. Hopefully we can quash that thing in a couple of years.
Spoiling the kids. Hugging my wife, and my wife hugging me. When times were better, she bought me a set of Ping Rapture V2’s. I told her that’s what I wanted for Christmas this year.
I plan on buying her a few things. I honestly don’t need anything.
Wow. No kidding? I'll check that right out. Maybe Walmart still has them. We have a large freezer.
Well, then mine have plenty of time to grow up as they’re teens. Nothing older than 3 weeks is good enough for them...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.