Theme for the Year, Useful Gifts

It's that Christmas time of year again.  Everyone is out shopping.  In our family we don't really do much of a gift exchange with the adults.  I usually exchange gifts with my partner, but that's about it.  However, kids are a very different story.

This year we've decided to go for a break from traditional.  I was originally going to hand-make all of my gifts this year, but that ambitious goal turned out to be too ambitious for me.  I figured that would cut down on consumerism, but the truth is I'll still end up buying things to make the present.  It's not like I have a sheep to sheer, then wash the fleece, card it, spin it, knit with the yarn, and some time in the process, dye it with home-made dyes that I grow at my own home.  The consumer process does happen in there, and while home-made gifts are typically the best, I honestly think there should be a some value placed on time.  Right now, it's something I just don't have enough of.

That being said, I wanted our Christmas present theme to be useful items.  Now, I know I'm going to be expecting some toys for family.  No matter what you say, nor how much you beg people not to, there are always going to be people who insist on giving toys to kids.  I've decided I'm not going to fight it.  More importantly, it's good for kids to receive toys for holidays and birthdays.  How else will they end up with new toys as they outgrow the old?

Every year my aunt has always been fantastic with flooding our house with useful things.  She sends us crayons, markers, and pencils.  There's been drawing paper, workbooks, and coloring books.  There's been crafts to decorate with and lots of other stuff to inspire creativity.  She sends books, which are always good to have.  There's so much variety, but I noticed that most of it has been useful, at least for the older two, even with a good number of toys sprinkled throughout.

Because of my aunt's inspiration and looking at my children's insane number of toys, I decided this year it's time for something different.  Last year Santa was a huge hit for bringing games to the whole family.  This year he's planning the same.  They encourage family time, togetherness, and fun.  However, this year our family is focusing on things that can inspire outside interests, and we're going to carry that through birthdays and everything.  It means knowing a lot more about my kids than what a kid of their gender and age would like.  However, it's totally worth it.  This is what makes gifts that wow.

Taking my daughter as an example, we can see what appeals to her quite easily.  Archery would be a good direction to choose.  She loves it.  She's been begging me for her own bow and arrows ever since she shot her first arrow.  She's all about art, always wanting to draw, paint, color, or otherwise create masterpieces.  I want to pick something that will appeal to those interests of hers.

My older son is really into art and music.  He likes to sing and make music on anything he can make noise on.  He loves to draw and paint too.  I want to encourage him in those fields because he needs to have interest in something other than toys.  He's got to start developing his own tastes.  He also loves science, but finding science stuff for his age isn't something I'm particularly good at.

The littlest one is really only into making messes right now, so it's hard to pick things he'd like.  He's good with coloring and seems to like the idea of painting.  Anything he can squish in his fingers is also good, so soft clays may not be a bad choice either.

I'm starting to realize that my kids have very limited interests.  They haven't experienced life as much as I might wish.  They don't really have much of an idea of what they might like to be when they grow up because they haven't experienced enough to know.  My daughter wants to be an artist and my older son wants to be a rock star, but how do they know for sure?  They haven't really had a chance to dabble in other areas of life.  Maybe my older son will always want to be a rock star, or a musician of some kind.  Maybe my daughter will always want to be an artist, but at least I hope I can open up some other options for them so they know for sure.  More importantly, if they do decide to keep those career choices, at the least maybe they'll know what direction within those careers.  Maybe my daughter will decide she wants to be a painter, an illustrator, or a potter.  Perhaps my son will want to grow up to be a classical guitarist or a musician with the orchestra.  We won't know until they get there.  All I can do is take this time to give them as many opportunities to explore as possible, and Christmas is just as good of a chance as anything else.

I feel pretty good about this Christmas.  I feel like I'm finally doing something better than just getting toys and leaving it at that.  I'm hoping that they find it as wonderful of a Christmas as I'm planning it to be.  After all, if I can't get away from consumerism, I might as well use the holiday season as a time to help my kids advance their own goals or find new areas of exploration in life.  There are plenty of people to make sure they have toys.  I know them better than anyone else, so it really should be my job to pick out the things that will inspire them this year.

Twain and our Economy

I was listening to CraftLit today while I was working on some knitting.  I'm a bit behind on the current episodes, so I'm still stuck on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I'm nearing the end of the book and have been loving it so far.  I just wish I had more time to sit down with the podcast, but carving an hour out of any day can be daunting with Marrok, Chesh, and the kids hovering over me.  I'm beginning to think I'm just not allowed a moment of peace and quiet unless I'm working on my book!

During the podcast Heather made an interesting observation on the chapters we would soon be hearing.  She observed that Twain would make a commentary on the state of the economy, something that's still true today.  She kind of wished everyone would be required to read these chapters.  I have to say, I'm inclined to agree.

In this book, Twain makes a really good point.  People talk a good deal about wages.  Minimum wage gets a lot of attention these days.  When it was $5.12 per hour, people thought it was incredibly low.  Now it's up to $7.25 per hour and rising.  A lot of people see this as a great thing.  Everyone on the low end makes more money, so we must be doing economically better, right?

Unfortunately not.  With the rise in minimum wage we've also seen a matching, possibly even exceeding rise in cost of living.  For example, when I got to Texas just over two years ago we were paying $2.50 for a gallon of gas and that seemed steep.  The gas cost skyrocketed up to nearly $4 per gallon the very next summer.  Granted, gas prices drop and rise in a crazy way, but that's how everything is.  The cost of living isn't as close to as low as it was back when minimum wage was $5.12 per hour.

I hate to say it, but what we're looking at when we talk about wages is the base wage.  We're not talking about purchasing power here.  We're not taking a look at how much you can buy with that money.  Sadly, the amount we can buy with our dollar is going down faster than the minimum wage is going up.  What does this mean?  Our economy is going to tank, not because minimum wage isn't high enough, but because the cost of living keeps on going up faster than our minimum wage.

It was proven time and time again that your average family cannot afford to live off of minimum wage.  It would take approximately three minimum wage jobs in any given area to cover the cost of expenses to maintain your average home and family with two kids.  This isn't even talking about excesses such as car payments and things like that.  That should be telling us something.

I've heard a lot of people blame the feminists.  If they didn't insist that women work we wouldn't need two incomes just to get by.  The problem isn't the feminists, it's our standard of living.  Our need to live in excess, create debt for ourselves, and live above our means has caused the need for two working parents in a family. If we could all learn to live within our means, not buy unneeded things, and make the most of our time, perhaps the face of our economy would change.  I know it's just food for thought at this point, but isn't that where everything starts?

So what am I going to do?  I know there's really nothing I can do about the minimum wage or the cost of living, but I can take a stand and make sure my dollars count.  Instead of buying expensive toys for my kids, I'm going to focus on affordable, as I have been.  I'm going to watch my personal spending and make sure my money is only going out to things I can actually condone and support.  I'm going to make sure the items my family has are quality, even if that means paying a bit more or doing a bit more work.  In the long run, it will be worth it.  If it outlives it's value, that's all that I care.

In the end, we're not really so much better than all these other countries out there.  For a little bit of a shocking reality check, take a look at this article, courtesy of Heather Ordover from CraftLit.  Go down the whole list.  Pay attention to both the prices, and how much food their family survives off of.  You might just be surprised at the degree to excess in which Americans live...

Cooking for my Family, the Cost of Cooking from Scratch

In the past I've always said I didn't want to cook from home for a reason.  Cooking from scratch is expensive.  It means you've got to have all the ingredients themselves on-hand, which isn't so expensive, I guess, if you have them all on hand already, or if you just need to pick up a little bit of this or that.  For me, cooking from home always seemed more of a luxury than I could afford, even with all the extra work required.

Yesterday was a prime example of that.  I went to the store with my dear friend.  We had to get some things into the house that I could actually eat.  Since I'm kicking all the things I'm allergic to, that doesn't leave terribly much, and as I looked at the items in the store, it became even more apparent that "not much" should really read, "nothing your average grocery store in Texas sells."  I ended up making sacrifices for things I really shouldn't be eating because I just don't want to give up everything I like all at once.

To give you an idea of what this diet means, doing it right means giving up everything.  There's no butter substitute (they all have soy), no cheese substitute (they have milk protein and soy), no store-bought flour in this area, no bread, no baked goods, no cereal, no granola bars, no candy, no snack food, no anything.  Even things that seem safe, like salt and vinegar chips, as it turns out, the vinegar flavor is made with dairy.  It's not so much the dairy that's the problem, though that is a challenge in it's own.  It's giving up soy.  It's shocking how many things are made with soy these days!

Taking a look at what's available to me, that leaves a very meat and potatoes kind of situation for meals.  We can't do anything creative because most creativity involves dairy of some kind, flour, or breading.  I suppose in many ways it's healthier to take a meat and potatoes kind of approach to things, but it's definitely limiting when the local grocery store's idea of produce is a small selection of broccoli, carrots, corn, and potatoes.  I was lucky enough to find some summer squash and acorn squash.  I've never eaten acorn squash, so I'm interested to see what that's going to be like.

It doesn't help that some of the substitutes are very expensive.  Coconut milk, rice milk, rice flour (which I have to order online around here), and all of that are very pricey.  I'm learning that fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables are very expensive too.  I'm not sure how long we can afford doing this!  Then again, we may find that cooking like this actually reduces the overall amount that we eat, but it's frustrating nonetheless.

Last night's grocery bill doubled our family's meal cost for the week last night, and all we did was avoid prepackaged foods.  Because I'm gravitating towards things that are good for me, healthy for the whole family, and are fresh, raw ingredients, things are getting that much more expensive.

Healthy and organic, one would imagine, wouldn't be a significantly more expensive option when it comes to cooking.  Families should be able to eat for less when they buy foods they make from scratch, things that will be healthy for them.  I've always thought the exchange was supposed to be things made from scratch cost less, but required much more work.  Prepackaged foods were supposed to cost more, but were quick and easy.  Now it seems like there's no exchange at all.  You have to be made of money to cook good, quality, healthy meals for your family.

Green Alternative to Black Friday Shopping

What is it about Black Friday that gets everyone up and shopping?  I know it has some of the best sales in the country, but are we really that much of a consumer culture?  I've been dragged shopping on Black Friday with a friend of mine and the sales may have been good, but the crowds were horrible.  I didn't really see the point.

Shopping on Black Friday also isn't great for the world around us.  Think of all the fumes expelled from vehicles as shoppers race from store to store.  Think of all those pollutants!  Then there's all the extra electricity use so stores can be open longer hours, earlier in the morning and later at night, if not all night.  All of that energy adds up.  What about all the people who eat out rather than eating a nice home-cooked meal because they're already out and it's convenient?  All in all, it's not the greatest concept for the world around us.

This year instead of hitting up the Black Friday sales, I'm looking for alternatives.  I've already decided many of my gifts this year have to be hand-made.  I guess a Black Friday sale at the yarn shop would be quite dangerous for my budget, but that's about it.

Making gifts has a seriously positive impact on the world around us.  Not only are the gifts made from the heart, and therefore have personal value, they're also higher quality than many store-bought items.  These items frequently come at a lower cost and require less energy to make.  Aside from making the materials themselves, the only energy expended is that of making it yourself, which leaves a much smaller impact on the environment.  After all, at most you'll eat more.  Hand-made gifts require more thought, since you're not going to spend all that time to make something the recipient will hate.  They're also generally more useful than many store-bought items.  Hand-made items come in such a variety too that there's always something for everyone.

This year while everyone else is running around doing their Black Friday sale shopping, I'm going to be taking some time to truly enjoy the start of the holiday season, kicking back and spending some time with my family.  Yes, I might miss the sales that so many other shoppers are hitting, but at least I'll know I can spend some quality time with my family and my room mates, possibly even making up some Christmas gifts while we're at it.  I think that's more than worth it.