There have been times where I've wondered how our MOPS meetings even happen. Here we are, a large group of women with numerous children, making our way to Westgate Chapel. Each woman carefully juggling kids, purses, phones, diapers, toys, snacks and sometimes even a quiche! (I even went out and bought an insulated casserole carrier to help with this task despite my idea that women under 60 aren't supposed to own those.) All of this after we have conquered waking up (read drinking an entire pot of coffee), making sure our sweet angels are snuggled, fed, dressed, brushed, clean and packed. Oh yeah, and if we can do some of those things for ourselves, even better. Then we battle traffic and any number of other obstacles that impede our progress to our MOPS meeting. That was me this Tuesday. And I know I was not alone. I was late because I had forgotten Nicholas‘ lunch in the kitchen, so yay for me, two trips to school before 9am! Upon arrival I find that I was not the only harried Mom coming in late. One Mom divulged to me that she had such a hard morning with her kiddos, she considered not coming. Another mama was consoling her little one that was just not interested in being in Moppets today. The last mom I saw was upset because in the process of getting everyone here this morning she had lost her phone. Fast-forward an hour into our meeting, we are all settled in, further caffeinated, fed, and the chaos of our mornings is fading away.
This meeting we heard from Emilie McFarlane, a mom of three young children, and a contributor to the blog This Beautiful Frugal Life. Emilie came to share with us how to celebrate Christmas on a budget. She began by sharing a story about a past Christmas where in an effort to save money she chose to hand-make many of her gifts. Through this she realized that home-made does not necessarily cost less, and that planning your time is of key importance as she was still putting her gifts together on Christmas morning. I so have been there myself. Remember the t-shirt scarves we made last year? Yup, I was still cutting up t-shirts on Christmas morning last year. The first thing Emilie suggests doing is to make a plan and set limitations. Your plan can involve goals and priorities over the season, knowing time specific information like shipping or craft projects, making traditions, and gifting ideas like drawing names or having a theme. Next, Emilie addressed having a budget for your Christmas expenditures This could be as specific as including wrapping, decor, cards, clothing and even gas into your finances, or keeping it simple and focus on just the gifts themselves. Her #1 biggest tip for saving money over the holidays is to use cash. When the money is gone, you are done.
Emilie provided us with an outline full of great websites and links on saving time, money and sanity. I had no idea about Retailmenot.com that posts promotional codes for a number of different retail stores, or Cheapism.com that tracks stores price matching polices, and Blackfriday.com that compiles all the promotions planned for the big day. Great news for many was that unless you love the craziness of Black Friday, most of those deals are accessible either on the store websites on Friday or on the following Cyber Monday. Lastly, Emilie shared a number of creative gift ideas that include the idea of gifting experiences, personal photo gifts, themes like cooking or colors. My favorite idea that was nearly no cost was to make gift certificates for things like an extra 1/2 hour until bedtime, or even let the kids create gift certificates for things they would like to do with Daddy.
This meeting was so full of great, practical information that I’m sure you’ll want to access this stuff again. Emilie wrote a special blog post with links to all the great websites and other ideas she mentioned. You can find that post by clicking here
She also included a link for the outline of her talk, so if you missed it or have already lost yours, you can see it again. Here’s hoping for a Christmas season full of peace, joy and special memories to you and yours.
--Kristine Manz
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