Welcome to a series of blogs I'm going to be doing sporadically over the holiday season. It's going to be about planning and having a Happy, Homemade Christmas. Or my attempts to do so!
I have a different perspective on Christmas this year. My growing interest in all things vintage and my focus on "reduce, reuse, recycle" and trying to integrate this mantra into my everyday life has had a great effect on me. I'm starting to have an adverse reaction to what has become near-normal for this time of year - a commercialised orgy of spending, focused on buying new things and conspicuous consumption.
I only have to look at the growing pile of junk mail that is accumulating in my recycling bin to realise that I could get very wrapped up in spending money not only on gifts for others (that they probably don't really need) but also on myself right now.
Please don't think of me as ready to throw off the shackles of chain store shopping just yet, but I am ready to refocus my perspective of the season onto stuff that feels more right than just spending money on "things".
I'm going to try to do things "homemade" where possible, and get my gifts locally or from small business. Ideally, I would love to source all my gifts from Etsy! It will not be easy, but I'm going to give it a crack, and be sharing with you the lovely things I discover along the way.
It's not all going to be about gifts either. Other things I want to try to do the Homemade Way:
- cooking and baking
- cardmaking
- giftwrapping
- decorating
source: pinterest
What do you think about Christmas? Do we get too focused on buying stuff?
Hi, I'm Sarah! I'm 33 and searching for my passion.
Until then, I slog away in a cubicle working full-time and focus on enjoying my downtime with things like TV (my old friend), movies, twitter, (trying to) cook, reading and hanging out with my hubby. My head is turned by things like vintage homewares, stationery, chocolate and scrapbooking. I blog about whatever takes my fancy.
Every year my in laws (only family near me) say they aren't doing Christmas gifts & every year we go "Ok we won't either", only to show up on Christmas Day to presents, making us look like a**holes. So this year I'm not bothering to have that conversation - I'm going to make a token present for most people. Because those clearly come from me and not my husband, he usually records people a song a present.
ReplyDeleteYour in-laws sound like lIke lovely folk! Imagine doing such a thing. Having a small token gift ready sounds like a good solution! You are lucky to have a talented husband who can give the gift of music :)
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