Wednesday, December 26, 2007

holiday shakedown

whew. it's over. i must say i am happy to be on the other side of the gift getting/giving/ buying part of the holiday season. this year was really confusing for me. pre-environmental freakout, i bought a bunch of crazy stuff for the kids (like a make your own superball kit) and sean (a heated back massager for the car. ?#@$?). post-freakout, i made homemade gift cards out of construction paper because i didn't want to buy the plastic ones. a few days before christmas, we met my parents at the mall and i felt like an alien watching everyone scramble to buy their last minute stuff. when the girls opened their gifts, there was such a strange mixture of decadent plastic stuff they'll quickly abandon and carefully selected used books they'll be reading for years. it sure is hard and awkward to change sometimes.

for me, the big thing i learned is that i don't want to do it like that again next year. i want to make my gifts next year, giving myself tons of time to get them done. i think i'll make a list of the things i want to give to each person and make them throughout the year, creating a stockpile of knitted hats and jewelry and bath salts and artwork instead of racing out to the mall in a final hour frenzy. it will be fun to see how different the holidays look and feel around here next year.

my friend gave me a cool book called "The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook" which has 77 suggestions for ways to go green. Number one is to Commit and number 2 is Change Slowly. the author says, "Changing an established way of life can take three to six months or more. Don't give up . . . in time, it gets easier and eventually becomes innate." so that's inspiring to me.

how were your holidays? i hope you had a wonderful season and are
getting ready for a fresh new year!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love your idea of making your own gifts for next year and giving yourself lots of time to do it. I'm sure the gifts you give will be beautiful and earth-friendly. It would be cool to enlist the girls in the process too, don't you think? I found with my four-year old that he was quick to jump from being excited about getting presents to being just as excited about giving them.

I agree with you, I'm glad to see the holidays pass by this year. Yesterday after the final gifts were opened I spent a couple of hours going through the kids' play room sorting through existing toys, and putting a lot of things in storage. I find that they have more fun when there is less stuff in the room.