"Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas." ~ Peg Bracken.
Again this year, we strived for a simple Christmas. After purging 581 items from my home this summer, it simply does not make sense to bring a bunch of unnecessary items back in.
And we did pretty well. The Christmas tree above holds all of the gifts for all 5 members of the family. We set a goal ahead of time to only buy 15 items for each of the girls (we may or may not have overshot that by a couple) but that did help us to have a stopping point and to not just continue to keep purchasing as Christmas neared.
Thankfully, the girls gave us (er... Santa) very simple lists with only 5 or 6 items, so we were able to get them things that they wanted (sweatshirt, glass doll, slippers, etc.) and then we were able to add some gifts of time (experience gifts such as season passes to Children Museum of NH, snowshoes, ski pass, chess game, etc) gifts of love (new blankies for all 3 girls, fingerless glove/arm warmers for me!) and a couple of frivolous, fun gifts (Wii game, a Nook Color)
In the end, the girls did not bat an eyelash at not having a hundred presents, we all had a fantastic Christmas which included lots of family, friends and the anticipation of the gifts we will be enjoying together for the next year.
Glad to hear you got your fingerless gloves. : )
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas!
What a beautifully magic Christmas!! Love it! We kept ours pretty simple as well, and it was wonderful! :)
ReplyDeleteTabitha
Smaller is definitely better I think, too! We only did like 3-4 things for the girls (but grandparents had other ideas).
ReplyDeleteAnd, I got THREE sets of fingerless gloves! Yay.