A Super Thrifty Christmas This Year

 

I have been really nervous about pulling off Christmas this year.  Although we have never been a family that enjoys an extravagant or expensive holiday I still wanted to make it a nice day for my girls.  Earlier this year I was excited because I was going to double our modest budget and buy my girls some things I knew they would need and enjoy in their adult lives.  But then all hell broke loose in April and instead of having a$200 Christmas budget I had no budget at all.

 

I love this thing and I'm super happy I made the investment

While I was home on medical leave I wasn't sure when I would return to work or what our financial future would hold.  One thing I did have was some time on my hands so I grabbed my yarn bin and I got to work.  I started making gifts using items I already had on hand.  Earlier in January I had done some post Christmas clearance shopping as well as shopping at a few thrift stores.  I am super glad that I did because I was able to restock my gift box and because of that I was able to put together quite a few gifts for my girls and my friends.  Then I wrapped them up all pretty with boxes, wrapping paper, tissues and bows I already had on hand in my gift wrap organizer.  I didn't need to purchase a single new thing for gifts this year.

 

Handcrafted Christmas cards

Like in years past I made all of the greeting cards I planned to send out and used stamps I had leftover from last year to mail them.  The Saturday after Thanksgiving I typed up our annual Christmas letter and used some white linen resume paper I had in my stash to print it out on.  I used mailing labels I already had on hand to print out the addresses as well as my return address with a cute Christmas motif.  Then I tucked the letters in some of the cards I send to family.  Once that was done I got all my cards addressed and stamps on them.  I used Christmas stickers from my stash to affix to the envelope flaps and they were ready to mail out.

 

Cocoa crinkles

I mentioned yesterday our Christmas menu plan this year and I'm thrilled that the majority of what we need is already in our house.  I will need a few, very few, fresh produce items and that is it.  Everything else we have.  And I won't need to buy anything this month for baking.  I do have a few food gifts in mind such as fudge, using leftover stuff from last year, and cookies to bake, using items from last year and a  few things I picked up on sale last month.  Other than that we are good to go.

 

Christmas Eve 2018

Without a doubt it is a huge relief to me to know that I was able to still pull off Christmas while keeping  our bills paid with half the year of no or part time income and remain debt free in the process.  It has been a tough year, but in retrospect it has also been a good year.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself making things from my craft stash as well as from items found on clearance racks and in thrift stores.  It was a true joy.  We'll enjoy a lovely Christmas and feel very blessed in the process.