A Near Penniless Christmas
This year I've gotten all the family gifts done already and I haven't spent a penny on anyone. I've made our gifts this year. This idea started when I made my kid his birthday presents and we decided we loved it so much I was going to make at least one gift for each kid's birthday - so why not for Christmas? With money tight I mapped out our spending for the end of year (most needs to go toward stuff for the new baby at the end of December). I could replace the ideas of more expensive ideas where I needed and as I did I found it was easy to make sure each item was meaningful. I made a list of two items I wanted to buy for Pippin and in the end I ended up replacing both with things I could easily make. One example of a swap we ended up making was a block set I found that was pretty whimsical but as I came up with ideas of things I could make I eventually found we didn't need the block set. I ended up making him a salt-flour paint set with some paper and a brush, a s...
