Okay, now that youÂ’ve made a commitment to have a financially sound and spiritually blissful holiday, hereÂ’s some ideas on how to do it or get others to join and/or support you in your efforts.

What do you buy a man or woman who has everything? Why a heifer of course! Or a Llama if you prefer. For such truly blessed individuals (like most of my family members), consider a donation to their favorite charity or volunteering in their name. You can also give a gift where you pay lifeÂ’s blessings forward and simply let the recipient know. Many charitable organizations will let you give a donation in someoneÂ’s memory or in honor a living loved one. Some will even go so far as letting the honored individual know directly how much they appreciated the donation and what it will mean to their organization.

This year I will be pooling the money from all the gifts I would have bought for my mom, my sisters & their husbands and buying something Udderly original: a heifer from heifer.org. I could have bought an animal for each member but I really wanted to buy a milking cow and change the lives of little children in a small indonesian village that was nearly wiped out by a typhoon recently. Heifer.org is an organization I trust (I did my due diligence 4 yrs ago) and have loved and support their work since I discovered them. I started with a flock of chicks ($20) and moved on to goats and last year it was a sheep. My goal of one day buying a heifer is finally here. What this organization does is not only give individuals the tools with which to farm, you money is providing them with the initial knowledge and seed money to enable their community to thrive, by requiring them to use part of their profits to also pay it forward. In doing so you donÂ’t help just one person, you help an entire community create a self-sustaining economic safety net that expands ever wider. Go ahead, I dare you to buy a heifer in someoneÂ’s name. Just imagine the look on their face when they get the card announcing the gift and thanking them for the gift of the heifer. Priceless!
HereÂ’s another idea that my group of friends and I used to practice: A Secret Santa Gift Exchange. On a slip of paper individuals write their name with 3 gift preferences in the agreed to price range ($50 after all it is only 1 gift instead of 10). The slips of papers for these friends, co-workers, or family members are all put inside a hat. Each person picks one name and one name only from the hat and buys a gift for that person. Imagine, only going into a store to buy 1 family member a gift. On Christmas Eve or Christmas Day the gifts are exchanged, and the beauty of this is that you will have enough money left over to treat your family to a dinner out on the town and a movie and pay off your old debt and thus ensure a financially worry free future.

Another way to show someone they are special is by making them a gift from your heart. Something special I did for my friends on ValentinesÂ’s day was make digital memory gifts. I would create either a cd of the latest love songs or a montage of pictures and video clips from things we all did the prior year and would then add music to it creating a wonderful memory keepsake. Each cd/dvd would be different as the music and pics were tailored to that personÂ’s taste. For the girls in our group I once made my Girls Night In Basket. It would be filled with a small bottle of bubble bath, a trashy romantic novel, chocolate kisses, a pack of frozen hot chocolate mixes from Serendipity, a microwave popcorn bag, and movie rental gift certificates. Everything a single girl needs for those quiet winter evenings at home.

HereÂ’s a few other places where you can get ideas for creating inexpensive gifts with love.

http://www.makezine.com/magazine/
http://craftzine.com/magazine/
http://www.thelaboroflove.com/forum/dollar/24.html
http://www.thelaboroflove.com/forum/dollar/20.html
http://www.thelaboroflove.com/forum/dollar/23.html
http://www.mommysavers.com/christmas/index.shtml

Posted by: Michele at 01:24 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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