A Hundred Dollar Holiday Tradition

A Hundred Dollar Holiday - How To Create a Homemade Christmas

In December 2008, I started my own tradition of creating a hundred dollar holiday. At the same time, I joined the ranks of Squidoo...it is a fun place to voice your opinion...click the above link to get tons of information on creating a beautiful holiday celebration for less than $100. The tradition continues.

You want to make a memorable Christmas holiday for your family but you have no idea how to do it! We will explore ways to make a beautiful Christmas memory without spending a lot of money.

I have always been a make it, take it kind of person. There will be how-to's, ideas, recipies, videos, and much more. New stuff will be added daily...so chack back often!

Please share a favorite homemade idea, your family holiday traditions, or special things you do on Christmas Eve or Christmas day in the guestbook at the bottom of the page!

"So the reason to change Christmas is not because it damages the earth around us, though surely it does. (Visit a landfill the week after Christmas.) The reason to change Christmas is not because it represents shameful excess in a world of poverty, though perhaps it does. The reason to change Christmas - the reason it might be useful to change Christmas - is because it might help us to get at some of the underlying discontent in our lives. Because it might help us see how to change every other day of the year, in ways that really would make our whole lives, and maybe our entire 365-days-a-year culture, healthier in the long run." Bill McKibbon - see his book below...read the rest of the article here...

angel art by Rebecca E. Parsons (Cre8Tiva) ...to help fund this artist's holiday--cards and matching postage available at Cre8Tiva's Shoppe

free Christmas gift tags...

I never buy gift tags...there are plenty of them available on the internet from artists who gift them to you. Just download and print them on card stock!!! Cut them out - or let you kids do it- and voila...tags for any mood or personality!!!

by Lori @ fresh picked whimsey pictured above she has 4 other sets

hundreds of FREE gift tag downloads in one place on Francie Horton's blog Living Life as Art...you can see ALL of them here

or, for slower browsers, just the text links are lsited on the page below...

hundreds of FREE gift tag downloads in one place on Francie Horton's blog Living Life as Art

Enjoy!!!


while you're in the spirit, check out my Hunderd Dollar Holiday ideas here... loads of fun, FREE, inexpensive ideas to make your holidays more joy filled and less stress filled...

Christmas Reflections and Traditions...

i have joined The Inspired Room's annual Friday Holiday Linkyyou can see other limky by clicking the link...
There is no ideal Christmas;
only the one Christmas you decide
to make as a reflection
of your values, desires, affections, traditions.
Bill McKibben*
This quote really touched something deep in me. I hate to admit it, but 2009 has been a very tough year and I have been feeling really down, disconnected, and not my joyful self...I do not like to whine too much, because I have a beautiful and full life...so when I contemplated the above quote, I realized that it is exactly what I believe and bring that makes a holiday joyful...not feeling sorry for myself...




St. Francis Preaching to the Birds - Giotto
So what am I going to do about my feelings of sadness...what I always do when I am too focused on self...turn outward and think of others:

Your Local Food Bank Needs You

This holiday season, consider the possibility of making your dinner a food drive; you can ask your guests to bring canned goods, in lieu of house gifts...Have a neighborhood food drive with your children - make a flyer and pass around this weekend and pick up Monday and deliver to the food bank...

Food banks are really suffering this year...because of the economy, many more people have had to call on thier local food bank for help...if you have any extra money or canned goods...stories like this abound this year...please help if you can...

Hoffman, 55, is one of the growing number of "nontraditional" food pantry clients across the country. They include more formerly independent senior citizens, more people who own houses and more people who used to call themselves "middle-class" — those who are not used to fretting over the price of milk.

"We're getting calls all the time from people who want to know how to get here," said Kristine Gibson, community outreach manager at the Stockton food pantry. "And when I ask where they live, they give an address of a nice neighborhood, one where you or I would want to live."

No matter what city you live in, and no matter what newspaper you read, you have probably seen a headline that says something like “Local Food Bank Donations Down,” or “Shelves Empty at the Food Bank.”

According to a recent thread on Chowhound, certain items are almost always a good bet:

Canned Chicken
Powdered Milk
Canned Tuna
Saltine Crackers
Soups
Juices
White Rice
Jarred or Canned Spaghetti Sauce
Grape Jelly
Canned Vegetables
Breakfast Cereals
Pork & Beans
Peanut Butter
Macaroni & Cheese
Baby food & formula
Pet food, for companion animals

And, of course, money donations are always welcome as well. To find the nearest food bank to you, check out Second Harvest’s Food Bank locator.

What they’ve got too much of? Kidney beans.

I will repeat my tradition a la St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis loved animals because they, too, were God's creatures. He extended special kindness to animals at Christmas. He urged farmers to provide their oxen and donkeys with extra rations of corn and hay "for the reverence of the Son of God, whom on such a night the Blessed Virgin did lay down in the stall between the ox and the donkey." At Christmastide, St. Francis scattered crumbs of bread under the trees, so the tiny creatures could feast and be happy. I am going to scatter bird seed around my tiny island on Christmas eve so that the birds, too, can celebrate...




Saint Francis' birds are fed on Christmas Eve 2007 - a new tradition launched
Read about other Christmas traditions here...

See my Hundred Dollar Holiday ideas and Hundred Dollar Holiday post....to learn more...

* Bill McKibben, author, Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case For a More Joyful Christmassays, "The Christmas we now celebrate grew up at a time when Americans were mostly poor ... mostly working with their hands and backs. If we now feel burdened and unsatisfied by the piles of gifts and over consuming, it is not because Christmas has changed all that much. It's because we have." ...read article here...

Christmas Reflection and Traditions...

There is no ideal Christmas;
only the one Christmas you decide
to make as a reflection
of your values, desires, affections, traditions.
Bill McKibben*
This quote really touched something deep in me. I hate to admit it, but 2008 has been a very tough year and I have been feeling really down, disconnected, and not my joyful self...I do not like to whine too much, because I have a beautiful and full life...so when I contemplated the above quote, I realized that it is exactly what I believe and bring that makes a holiday joyful...not feeling sorry for myself...

St. Francis Preaching to the Birds - Giotto

So what am I going to do about my feelings of sadness...what I always do when I am too focused on self...turn outward and think of others...

Your Local Food Bank Needs You

This holiday season, consider the possibility of making your dinner a food drive; you can ask your guests to bring canned goods, in lieu of house gifts...Have a neighborhood food drive with your children - make a flyer and pass around this weekend and pick up Monday and deliver to the food bank...

Food banks are really suffering this year...because of the economy, many more people have had to call on thier local food bank for help...if you have any extra money or canned goods...stories like this abound this year...please help if you can...

Hoffman, 55, is one of the growing number of "nontraditional" food pantry clients across the country. They include more formerly independent senior citizens, more people who own houses and more people who used to call themselves "middle-class" — those who are not used to fretting over the price of milk.

"We're getting calls all the time from people who want to know how to get here," said Kristine Gibson, community outreach manager at the Stockton food pantry. "And when I ask where they live, they give an address of a nice neighborhood, one where you or I would want to live."

No matter what city you live in, and no matter what newspaper you read, you have probably seen a headline that says something like “Local Food Bank Donations Down,” or “Shelves Empty at the Food Bank.”

According to a recent thread on Chowhound, certain items are almost always a good bet:

Canned Chicken
Powdered Milk
Canned Tuna
Saltine Crackers
Soups
Juices
White Rice
Jarred or Canned Spaghetti Sauce
Grape Jelly
Canned Vegetables
Breakfast Cereals
Pork & Beans
Peanut Butter
Macaroni & Cheese
Baby food & formula
Pet food, for companion animals

What they’ve got too much of? Kidney beans. And, of course, money donations are always welcome as well. To find the nearest food bank to you, check out Second Harvest’s Food Bank locator. from the slow food blog

I will repeat last year's new tradition a la St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis loved animals because they, too, were God's creatures. He extended special kindness to animals at Christmas. He urged farmers to provide their oxen and donkeys with extra rations of corn and hay "for the reverence of the Son of God, whom on such a night the Blessed Virgin did lay down in the stall between the ox and the donkey." At Christmastide, St. Francis scattered crumbs of bread under the trees, so the tiny creatures could feast and be happy. I am going to scatter bird seed around my tiny island on Christmas eve so that the birds, too, can celebrate...

Saint Francis' birds are fed on Christmas Eve 2007 - a new tradition launched

Read about other Christmas traditions here...

See my Hundred Dollar Holiday ideas and Hundred Dollar Holiday post....to learn more...

* Bill McKibben, author, Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case For a More Joyful Christmas says, "The Christmas we now celebrate grew up at a time when Americans were mostly poor ... mostly working with their hands and backs. If we now feel burdened and unsatisfied by the piles of gifts and over consuming, it is not because Christmas has changed all that much. It's because we have." ...read article here...

A Nation of Devout Consumers

The Long Lost Silent Night
by Bill McKibbon...read the rest of the article here and visit my hundred dollar holiday website here...

But that’s not the real culprit. Much more, it’s the way all the noises that we choose to listen to have infiltrated our minds. We’re caffeinated, buzzed, wired, plugged-in. In one recent survey, only 19 percent of Americans said they wanted a "more exciting, faster-paced life." Excitement can’t excite us anymore.

What can excite us – what can make us salivate the way a circus could make some Kansas farm boy salivate – is the prospect of a lull, an interlude. Stillness scares us (that’s why the TV goes on when we walk in the hotel room) but it attracts us, too. If there’s one thing we’d really like from Christmas, I think, it’s a little of that "season of peace" that the greeting card writers are always promising. It’s one of the reasons "Silent Night" is the all-time favorite carol. There’s a moment when we sing it each year at the end of the Christmas Eve service, with the lights out and everyone holding a candle that frames their face with soft light, and that marks for me the absolute height of Christmas.

If there’s one way in which the world has changed more than any other since 1840, one thing that’s truly different about our lives, it’s that we’ve become such devout consumers. That consumption carries with it certain blessings (our lives are long and easy by any historical standard) and certain costs (first and foremost the damage it causes to the rest of creation). But the greatest cost may be the way it’s changed us, the way it has managed to confuse us about what we really want from the world. We weren’t built just for this life we find ourselves leading – we were built for silence and solitude, built for connection with each other and the natural world, built for so much more than we now settle for. Christmas is the moment to sense that, the moment to reach for the real joys.

I am challenging myself and others to create A Hundred Dollar Holiday this year...read the following post for details...

A Hundred Dollar Holiday

A Hundred Dollar Holiday - How To Create a Homemade Christmas

I have joined the ranks of Squidoo...it is a fun place to voice your opinion...click the above link to get tons of information on creating a beautiful holiday celebration for less than $100.

You want to make a memorable Christmas holiday for your family but you have no idea how to do it! We will explore ways to make a beautiful Christmas memory without spending a lot of money.

I have always been a make it, take it kind of person. There will be how-to's, ideas, recipies, videos, and much more. New stuff will be added daily...so chack back often!

Please share a favorite homemade idea, your family holiday traditions, or special things you do on Christmas Eve or Christmas day in the guestbook at the bottom of the page!

angel art by Rebecca E. Parsons (Cre8Tiva)

"So the reason to change Christmas is not because it damages the earth around us, though surely it does. (Visit a landfill the week after Christmas.) The reason to change Christmas is not because it represents shameful excess in a world of poverty, though perhaps it does. The reason to change Christmas - the reason it might be useful to change Christmas - is because it might help us to get at some of the underlying discontent in our lives. Because it might help us see how to change every other day of the year, in ways that really would make our whole lives, and maybe our entire 365-days-a-year culture, healthier in the long run." Bill McKibbon - see his book below...read the rest of the article here...

I have been in California for a week now...getting some much needed rest and recuperation...it rained for the first few days...so much for it never rains in California...it does...I will upload some pictures when I figure out how on my sons' computer...

Yes, Virginia...There is a Recession...DUH!!!

US Economy In Recession Since December 2007
Yesterday, Monday, December 1st 2008,

"The National Bureau of Economic Research said that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy .

The NBER is a private group of leading economists charged with dating the start and end of economic downturns. It typically takes a long time after the start of a recession to declare its start because of the need to look at final readings of various economic measures.

Achuthan's research firm tracks weekly leading economic indicators that are supposed to signal a change in direction for the economy four or five months ahead of time. Those indicators are continuing to fall at a record pace."

Those of us in the trenches, fighting for our lives, have known this for a long time now. I suppose next year they will release the news that we are in a depression since December 2008...

so much for our economists...

The good news: 55 percent of economists surveyed in a new poll don't believe the U.S. will fall into a full-blown recession.

images from:
NY Times.com
Public Radio.com

Christmas Reflection...

There is no ideal Christmas;
only the one Christmas you decide
to make as a reflection
of your values, desires, affections, traditions.
Bill McKibben*

Mrs. Nesbitt's thought for the day really touched something deep in me. I hate to admit it, but I have been feeling really down, disconnected, and not my joyful self this year because I will be spending the holiday alone...all my children will be at their father's house...I do not like to whine too much, because I have a beautiful and full life...so when I contemplated the above quote, I realized that it is exactly what I believe and bring that makes a holiday joyful...not feeling sorry for myself...

St. Francis Preaching to the Birds - Giotto

So what am I going to do about my feelings of sadness...what I always do when I am too focused on self...I have decided to create a new tradition a la St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis loved animals because they, too, were God's creatures. He extended special kindness to animals at Christmas. He urged farmers to provide their oxen and donkeys with extra rations of corn and hay "for the reverence of the Son of God, whom on such a night the Blessed Virgin did lay down in the stall between the ox and the donkey." At Christmastide, St. Francis scattered crumbs of bread under the trees, so the tiny creatures could feast and be happy. I am going to scatter bird seed around my tiny island on Christmas eve so that the birds, too, can celebrate...

Read about other Christmas traditions here...

* Bill McKibben, author, Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case For a More Joyful Christmas says, "The Christmas we now celebrate grew up at a time when Americans were mostly poor ... mostly working with their hands and backs. If we now feel burdened and unsatisfied by the piles of gifts and over consuming, it is not because Christmas has changed all that much. It's because we have." ...read article here...