• Home
  • About
  • Archives
  • Contact

Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

  • Marriage
  • Parenting
  • Faith
  • Christmas

A Zero-Budget Christmas: A Little Perspective

Zero-Budget Christmas

A Zero-Budget Christmas

2: A little Christmas perspective

Mothers are amazing. Most healthy mothers, no matter their financial status, will do whatever it takes to meet their kids’ needs. They take extra jobs, learn how to stretch a budget, and give up their own personal comfort for the benefit of their children.

What is even more amazing is that most mothers really don’t mind doing any of this because it’s for their kids.

But at Christmas, the disparity between the families who have plenty and the ones who are just scraping by seems a little wider. Mothers who otherwise “make it work” and carry a sense of pride in how they manage to care for their children, suddenly feel the sharpness of lack.

As someone who has been there, allow me say this: there is a massive difference in knowing you are not rich and feeling poor. No one likes to feel poor.

Maybe you know that feeling too, and you are looking for a better way to make it through the season. Fortunately, this series is here to help. I’ve learned lots of tips and tricks over the years as my husband and I have raised five kids on a shoestring.  The great news is, you can make Christmas magical on a zero-budget.

I introduced this series by telling you our Christmas story.

Now, before we do anything else, we’re going to put Christmas in perspective. Stick with me here–I am not trying to get out of giving you actual, practical advice on how to make Christmas work when money is limited. That’s coming.

But I would be negligent in my care of you if I did not start with some important fundamentals. I can tell you how to do more with less money, but nothing will change for you unless you understand your motivation for giving and learn how to protect your heart from manipulation.

If you do not get this, you will spend the rest of your Christmases running the same frantic race, no matter what your budget, because you will believe that if you don’t do it right, you will have failed.

That is not the better way.

toy truck with Christmas tree

 

Still, it’s the path many of us end up taking because we love our kids, and our heart’s desire is to make sure they feel that love every day. Usually, that means smiles and hugs and making pancakes once in a while, but at Christmas, the cultural expectation in our time in history is that we show love through lavish gift-giving.

This has not always been the case, of course. If you’ve ever read through Little House in the Big Woods, you might remember what Mary and Laura and the cousins received on Christmas morning: a peppermint stick and new, red mittens.  Laura alone got a new, handmade doll that Ma made from fabric scraps, but Mary didn’t because she already had one.

Times have changed! Now, even our expectations have expectations: try giving any kid the same gifts Mary and Laura got and you’ll see what I mean. What has changed is marketing. We have it. They didn’t. Every single product sold in every single store is run through a fine-tuned system developed to capitalize on our human emotions of greed, pride, and guilt.

And it works. According to research, the average American plans to spend nearly $1000 on gifts in 2016!  Parents are anticipating spending an average of $422 per child.

If you are on a limited or nearly zero-budget, those expectations sink you. You can feel like a failure because you cannot meet those expectations without endangering your family’s finances.

Budget Christmas

But you have to realize this: shame is one of the emotions the marketing industry loves best because it motivates you to spend more than you should to make it go away. That is manipulation, plain and simple, and once you call it out, it makes it easier to fight back.

We have to be smarter than the industry and secure enough in our financial choices to make decisions in December that won’t haunt us in January. We need to choose the better things, and I don’t mean higher-quality products.

One of the best ways to do that is to stay conscious of the higher goal. It’s easy to fall victim to the social pressure to give our kids a great Christmas (whatever we think that means) because it echoes our natural inclination. We delight in giving good gifts to our children. That is a fragment of God in us.

The trouble is, we take it to extremes. If we’re not careful, our desire to give our children good gifts can prevent them from receiving an even better gift: contentment.

We have to remind ourselves that our goal as parents should never be to give our kids everything they want, but rather, to help our kids be content with whatever they have.

We say we believe that, but when we begin to fear our children’s disappointment, find ourselves getting a sense of pride or identity in the gifts we give, become consumed with finding the “right” gift or giving “enough” presents, chances are, we’re pursuing happiness rather than fostering contentment in ourselves and in our children.

Don’t get me wrong-happiness is nice. I will not argue with that. But it’s like a cubic zirconium: lots of sparkle with little lasting value.

Contentment is the diamond.

zero-budget-Christmas-2

Having a right Christmas perspective means seeking contentment over happiness

Remember that when you’re standing in the toy aisle or adding items to your Amazon cart. You can completely blow your budget to give your kids happiness, but it will not last. Or, you can choose to stay within the budget that best fits the long-term goals of your family and work on fostering contentment instead.

One will begin to pay dividends in January. The other will leave you with a deficit. Either way, you choose.

Make the better choice, and no matter what your budget is, you will always have the best gift.

Next time, we’ll talk about ways to grow a zero-budget into some workable Christmas capital. If you’ve been wishing you had just a little more money to work with, you won’t want to miss it! You’ll be surprised at easy it is to do the very things you’re already doing but make money doing it!

*To begin A Zero-Budget Christmas series at the beginning, click here.

**During this series, affiliate links may be included for your convenience. Thank you for supporting this ministry!

Home, Parenting Leave a Comment

A Zero-Budget Christmas

Zero-Budget Christmas

A Zero-Budget Christmas

1: Making Christmas magical with little money

Our first Christmas was spent in a one-bedroom apartment in married student housing. We took a bit of the money Jeff earned from shoveling the sidewalks for the First Congregational Church of Hamilton and headed to the local Target to buy a $39 plastic Christmas tree.

We decorated it with a box of ornaments Jeff’s mother had saved for him through the years, and the ones I had collected because of my love for Christmas. But the only presents under the tree were the ones relatives sent and the bottle of Diet Coke Jeff secretly bought at CVS and wrapped for me.

For the next four years, that red brick apartment building was home. I had two babies in that time, and we took any jobs we could find to make grad school work: Jeff was a teaching assistant; I was a nanny. He shoveled snow and locked up buildings each night for a church; I cleaned houses.

We bought dented cans from the discounted bin at Stop and Shop, and I faithfully dug through piles at the campus thrift store to find clothes for our growing kids. On the day I made an appointment for WIC, I cried.

Still, I almost always loved the challenge of making our budget stretch to fit our needs. We were careful with our money, and because of that, we had everything we needed—and more.

But on Christmas, my mama-heart broke.

Christmas not in budget

No matter how careful we were to save, Christmas was not in the budget. 

That was okay when it was just the two of us, and it was even okay when the children were small enough not to know better. But in the years following seminary, when my husband was still working three jobs and our budget wasn’t much bigger, I struggled through the holidays because I wanted so much to make Christmas special for my kids, and it felt nearly impossible to do so.

One year, we had a budget of $10 a kid. Ten bucks. What could I do with ten bucks? They were old enough to feel the difference between a $10 Christmas and the kind their friends got. They were old enough to have wish lists and expectations.

I had expectations.

I crawled into bed that Christmas Eve after doing everything I could to fill stockings with things I’d collected, feeling like I had failed. Even though I had done my best, I felt guilty, like it was my fault I still couldn’t do better for them. I knew they would be so disappointed, and it made me ache.

But I was wrong. My children were never disappointed. In fact, they displayed the same kind of exuberance and gratitude on Christmas morning as I would have expected from a child who had received far more. To this day, they are thrilled to receive homemade gifts, don’t mind a bit if a gift is second-hand, and rarely have wish-lists longer than one or two very reasonable items.

In those hard years, when I thought I was depriving my kids, they were internalizing some very valuable lessons on materialism, gratitude, and the true joy of Christmas. Looking back, I can honestly say I wouldn’t trade that season for anything.

Even now, we keep Christmas simple. It’s much more of a choice these days than it used to be, but the principle stays the same: we don’t need a lot of money to stay within budget and give thoughtfully this year.

Christmas on a zero-budget

Mamas, if this time of year is hard for you because Christmas is not in the budget, my heart goes out to you. I know how hard the struggle can be to give your kids everything they need—and to still fall short this time of year. I know what it’s like to believe that simplicity is good, and yet to feel guilty and inadequate because your kids have to do without…again.

This short series is for you on how to make a magical Christmas on a (nearly) zero budget. In the next few days, I’ll be posting tons of ideas we have gleaned from our thirteen years of “skinny” Christmases. They are all things you can do to give thoughtfully during this season and still stay within budget.

Be forewarned: This is not a series about spending as little as possible (remember, Scrooge was the bad guy); this is about doing the most with what you have so the people in your life feel your thoughtfulness, and you can enjoy this season with your kids and family without feeling a bit inadequate.

I hope you’ll join us, and as always, if you have questions or comments about this series or anything else, please let me know! My goal is to help you choose the better things this season so you can enjoy your family more…even on a zero budget.

Home, Parenting 2 Comments

Simply Homemade: Snowman Votive Ornaments

Simply Homemade

A few  weeks ago, a friend shared a cute idea on Facebook.  Someone had taken an LED votive candle and turned it into a snowman by drawing eyes on the candle and plunking a little top hat on its head.

The idea was super clever, and I had a dozen little votive candles left over from my Pottery Barn knock-off chandelier project.  What a great way to use them up!

But the snowmen I saw were kind of…boring.  Drawn-on eyes were cute, and top-hats are nice, but I wanted my votive snowmen to be extra-special because I wanted to give them to my kids for their Christmas ornaments this year.

I wanted my snowmen to have real knitted hats and eyes that looked like rocks, just like real snowmen.  I wanted cheery scarves and rosy cheeks and sweet little smiles.  In other words, I wanted to take a bunch of boring, old LED votive candles and turn them into something my kids would treasure.

I stared at my votive candles, and soon, and idea began to take shape.

Votive to Snowman

From votive to snowman

This is exactly what I had in mind for my kids’ ornaments.  What a sweet little snowman he turned out to be!

If you’re like me, you’re going to want to make a whole tribe of these to give away.  And why not?  They’re much easier to make than a real snowman, and you won’t even have to put your mittens on to do it.  But go ahead and sip some hot chocolate while you work.  It helps to make better snowmen, trust me.

How to Make Snowman Votive Ornaments

Snowman votive hat

Make a snowman hat out of an old sweater

I wanted to make snug little hats for my snowmen, but I can’t knit.  Besides, who has the time for that?  Instead, I rustled around in my stash of clothes destined for the thrift store and found the perfect red sweater.  Fleece would have worked well, or just about any fabric that has a little stretch to it.

It only took a few minutes to make hats for all five of my snowmen ornaments.  You can probably figure it out from the photos above, but just in case, here’s the step-by-step.

1) Cut a strip of fabric about twice as long as the votive, but not quite twice as high.

2) It works best if the fabric scrap is shaped like a trapezoid.  If you don’t remember what a trapezoid looks like (high school geometry was a long time ago, I know), see the photo above.

3) Use a glue gun to put a strip of glue at the top of the trapezoid.  If you have a sewing machine, you could sew instead of glue, but there’s no need to be an overachiever.

4) Pinch the fabric together to form the top of the hat.  Don’t burn your fingers!

5) Glue the back seams together.

6) Roll up the bottom of the hat and secure it with a bit of glue.

Votive snowmen

Ta-da!  Your snowman won’t be bald!

Finish the hats with jingle bells and pom-poms.  I also added little touches to each one like sequin “snow” and holly berries made out of beads because I think these details elevate the gift from homemade to hand-crafted.  It doesn’t take much more time to add the details, but the overall impression is that someone cared enough to make it special.

Glue the hats to the tops of the votives, being sure not to block the “on” switch on the back, or access to the battery.  You’re welcome.

Use a pink permanent marker to draw rosy cheeks on the faces, then use two different sizes of seed beads for the eyes and mouth.  If you’ve got Super Glue, use it.  Hot glue makes too much of a mess on these tiny beads, but you need a strong glue or they will pop off.

Snowmen votive ornaments

Snowman votive ornaments

Pick out some Christmas ribbon, tie it in the middle, and glue it off to the side of your snowman’s “chin” for a scarf.  A few inches is all you need!

I bought a bunch of Christmas ribbon on clearance last year so I happened to have enough different kinds of red ribbon to give each of my five snowmen a different scarf.  My kids will love the fact that they each get their own, unique snowman ornament.  No two scarves or hats are the same!

Snowman votives

What do you think?  Are you ready to make a batch of cheery snowmen for yourself?  You can order votive candles here to get started.

Don’t forget to pin this idea to your Christmas board, or share it with a friend so they can make one for you!

Variations: These snowman votive ornaments don’t have to be saved for the tree!  Here are some ways they can be used to brighten up the holidays.

  • Use them with a gift tag to decorate your wrapped presents.
  • String them on a ribbon and make a decorative garland for the mantel or mirror.
  • Tie one to a gift card to add a little personal touch to an otherwise impersonal gift.
  • Add a magnet to the back and bring a little Christmas cheer to the fridge!
  • Place the snowmen on an outdoor wreath and turn the candles on when expecting company.
  • Put one by your child’s bed as a night-light.

Save

Crafts 8 Comments

Next Page »
I believe you can find grace for the mother you are and help to become the mother you long to be—a mom who has the freedom to choose the better things and enjoy her kids right now.

Recent Posts

  • Mr. Whitter’s Cabin
  • Stuck
  • When Your Heart is Hard Toward Your Child

Popular Posts

  • Painting Tile and Other Ways to Save an Ugly Fireplace
  • Simply Homemade: Craft a Peacock Lamp Shade

Sponsored Links

Copyright © 2023 Kristen Anne Glover · All Rights Reserved · Design by Daily Dwelling

Copyright © 2023 · Flourish Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in