It's baaaack!

Here are the links to the other two posts about the leg lamp as a Christmas gag gift, for those of you who don't know the whole story.

Last night I was putting some stuff away in our guest room closet when I noticed an odd looking box.



Now the only question is, do we set the lamp up in their front window when they go on vacation? Or is our Christmas shopping done for them for next year?

Christmas Photos

I don't have anything really inspiring to share today, so I'm just going to post some Christmas photos of our Christmas.

The wrapping paper is definately more fun than the presents!

Amazingly Doodlebug's firt Christmas was a white Christmas. And we live in the South. Too bad he wasn't big enough to enjoy playing in the snow.


Mommy getting sloppy Christmas kisses. Doodlebug now thinks it's funny to lick me while kissing me.

Daddy and Doodlebug. Aren't they sweet?

Update to the Gag Gift

As promised, here are the pictures of my parent's opening their gag gift.

My husband found a site that allows you to make your own Western Union telegram so we make up one that said, "Have won major award will be delivered tonight stop".

We put the telegram in a gift bag from PF Chang's.

Reading the telegram....

Mom realizes what the gift is.... She doesn't look too happy. She kept repeating, "Oh no, oh no, oh no. They got us a leg lamp."

Dad realizes what it is.... He looks considerably happier than mom did.

Mom and Dad admiring their new lamp. Well, admiring may be putting a slightly positive spin on it.

Mom kept saying they were going to leave the lamp here for Doodlebug's room, but in the end Dad packed it in the car. I wonder if they put it up in their house.

The Great Santa Debate

I am amazed at all of the controversy that Santa brings up at this time of year. As I have been reading bits and pieces of other people's blogs and visiting message boards I keep seeing the issue of whether or not to tell kids that Santa isn't real. And, oddly enough, feelings run so high that people are getting nasty to each other when they disagree.

Here is where we stand. My child will believe in lots of things when he gets to be a toddler. I'm sure he will think there are monsters under the bed, that he has imaginary friends and that Santa does exist. I will tell him that the monster's aren't real, but I will likely talk to his imaginary friends and I won't correct him about Santa.

And I do wonder, for those people who do want their kids to believe in Santa, how do you explain all the discrepancies out there about how he works? It seems like every Christmas movie has different explanations for how Santa gets all those toys delivered in one night, how he gets in houses without chimnies and what enables the reindeer to fly. It's so ironic to me that the overwhelming promotion of Santa by our culture has made it so much more difficult for children to believe in what they are trying to promote.

Our home is not going to focus on Santa or on giving gifts. The Christmas season is the time to talk about the birth of Jesus, celebrate Jesus' birth, spend time with family, and to reach out to others. We're not against Santa, he just isn't the most important thing at Christmas time for us.

Our home does have a Christmas tree, a Nativity set, an Advent calendar, stockings hung on the mantle and gifts under the tree. I'm pretty sure that Santa will be dropping of presents at his grandparents' homes and I know he will have a stocking at Mawmaw's house that Santa will drop off there.

I realize others will tell my child about Santa, ask him if he's made his list and inevitably the other kids will tell him Santa doesn't exist. When he asks us about it, we plan to tell him the real story of St. Nicholas on a level that he can understand. Basically we want him to know that St. Nicholas was a real man who loved Jesus so he gave everything he had to other people. Because he loved Jesus and helping others so much people still celebrate his life by giving gifts and helping each other out at Christmas to each other to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Santa Claus in the red suit with all of the reindeer is not real, but the spirit of generosity and giving that he represents is. Moms and Dads tell their children about Santa Claus and pretend to be Santa Claus because they love them and they want to give them gifts and telling the story to children is fun. I also plan to tell him that we should not ruin the fun for other kids and their families by telling them that Santa is not real.

Santa Claus is very much a part of our culture. There is no way my child will not hear about Santa unless we move to The-Middle-of-Nowhere without a TV, internet and human contact. And let's face it, Santa can be pretty hard to compete with. What kid wants to hear about a baby born in a manger when he can hear about the jolly man with the fancy sleigh, flying reindeer and presents? Instead of insulating our child from that or trying to deny the existence of Santa to him, we plan to let Santa be a peripheral part of our celebration and use him as a way to explain to our child about Jesus and why the baby in the manger was such an important event.

A Gag Gift for Christmas

Every family has holiday traditions. Some are sweet, some are strange. One of ours involves watching A Christmas Story on Christmas Eve. Have you ever seen this movie?

This has to be one of our favorite scenes, the leg lamp. A couple of years ago they started selling the leg lamp in stores around Christmastime. I have always wondered, who the heck buys those things? Well now I know the answer, we do.

Now with all my blogging about being frugal this probably sounds like a really odd choice. And it kind of is. But here's how I'm rationalizing it. First of all it was on sale and we had a coupon. These are always very important considerations to me.

We were going to spend the money on a gift certificate for a restaurant for my parents. Now with the gift certificate they would get an evening out, but they would probably end up kicking in some money towards the bill as well. And the evening would come and go and the money would be gone. Instead, what we're buying for them is a gift that will be made into family legend. This is one of those gifts that will be talked about and laughed about for years to come. I think my money is better spent on the story that will come out of this particular gift. We even wrapped it up to resemble the way it arrived in the movie.



And since my parents have just moved they have been saying they need to buy more lamps for their house. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!

Christmas Gifts

Doodlebug and I go to the YMCA about 5 times a week. He loves it there. As soon as we get out of the car he starts to grin, wave his arms up and down and babbles away. When I hand him over at Child Watch he giggles and usually starts giving out hugs kisses to whoever takes him. These ladies are so wonderful to him and we wanted to give something back this Christmas to let them know how much we appreciate them. But with Christmas on a budget and a rotation of nine workers, that could be a difficult thing.

Hmm...I could bake cookies or brownies or something. But everyone gets so many of those during the holidays and I'm allergic to the flour anyway. Let's see...what else? I bet they also get way too many Christmas ornaments too. And do they really want to put something from my child on their tree year after year? Probably not. I'd really love to give them something so they could pamper themselves a bit. Most of them are moms, and we moms don't get a lot of time for pampering. But a gift basket is too expensive....

Then I read about a gift suggestion of bath salts. They are super easy, inexpensive and would allow the ladies to be pampered a bit during the holidays.

This is all you need.

Epsom salts (I paid less than $4 for a 4 pound container at Target.)
Some type of container (We are using baby food jars but any container would work.)
Food coloring (Optional. We used red and green to make it look more festive.)
Essential oil (Optional. We're using peppermint since we have this already and it seems pretty festive.)

Pour Epsom salts in a large jar or ziploc bag. Add food coloring and essential oils and close jar or bag tightly. Shake vigorously until all the food coloring is evenly disbursed. If you are using more than one color I would highly recommend pouring the salts out onto a plate at this point and allowing them to dry several hours.




Once the salts are dry pour into your gift containers and decorate or wrap as needed. You might want to include a label and/or instructions for use.


Voila! An inexpensive Christmas gift.

Baking

Lately I have been obsessed with baking. I don't know why. Since I was diagnosed with Celiac and I can no longer have wheat I haven't baked much. Of course, lots of gluten free baked goods are not worth eating. They leave a gritty texture in your mouth, taste funny or don't look right. Which is a real bummer after you mix up 4 or 5 different flours that all cost WAAAAAAAAY more than regular old wheat flour.

My latest success was with cut out cookies. Yum! I stopped at this website and was pulled in by the photo. These really looked like the cookies I remembered from my childhood.

Now I have to confess that as a kid the only thing I wanted to do was decorate the cookies. And not with icing, where's the fun in that? Sprinkles. Tons and tons of sprinkles. The color sugar kind, the little round ones, jimmies, any kind of sprinkles.

And the worst part was that after the dough was made it had to be refridgerated overnight. Do you know how long that is to a little kid? It might as well be until spring. Ugh.

As an adult I learned to dislike rolling out the dough as well. Flour everywhere, dough sticking to everything and trying to get it all to the same thickness was near impossible.

And yesterday I found a great advantage to gluten free sugar cookies. No putting the dough in the fridge. And rolling it out was a snap. It's not sticky so there's no need for extra flour. I just plunked it on some waxed paper, flattened it out with my hands, and rolled the rolling pin across it once or twice to get it smooth. Easy, peasy. Which just leaves more time for decorating.



Gluten Free Christmas Roll Cookies
Recipe makes 2 1/2 dozen cookies (depending on the size of the cookie cutters)
Ingredients
1/2 cup shortening (I used butter flavored Crisco)
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups GF flour blend (I used Jules Nearly Normal Flour recipe)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2-3 Tablespoons milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375F. (I confess that I never do this. Once I get the cookies rolled, cut out and decorated, it will be at least another 30 min so I do this much later.)

2. Cream together shortening and sugar until fluffy.

3. Add the egg and beat for 2-3 minutes.

4. In a separate bowl, whisk together GF flour mix, salt and baking powder.

5. Add flour mixture to creamed ingredients and mix until well incorporated.

6. Add 2 – 3 Tablespoons of milk until perfect, non-sticky cookie dough is achieved.

7. Roll out cookie dough to 1/4″-1/3″ thickness.

8. Cut with your favorite cookie cutter and liberally decorate with sprinkles. If there are no sprinkles, what is the point?

9. Bake 6 -7 minutes until the edges just begin to brown. (My oven took 10 min to get to this stage.)

Christmas

I have to say I haven't really looked forward to Christmas in years. When I was a kid it was about the Christmas tree, baking cookies, Christmas concerts, and people decorating their yards with lights. Now it is about making Christmas lists, shopping, wrapping gifts and avoiding certain Supercenters like the plague. It's a lot of preparation that leaves precious little time for Christmas trees, cookies, music and lights. So I started asking myself why we are doing this? December is hard on our budget and we usually end up giving gift cards to all the adults in the family. It's kind of like a gift card exchange. We might as well just have one person take a $20 bill out of their pocket, pass it around the room and when it gets back to the first person, put it back. So pretty much I am running to a bizillion different stores to get gift cards for them while they are doing the same for me? What kind of sense does that make?

This year we are doing things a little bit differently. We are buying gifts for the kids in the family only. No gifts for adults. And I am relieved. I don't have to make any wish list of stuff I don't need. I don't have to buy stuff for other people they don't need. I can stay at home and sip hot chocolate instead. The budget will be a lot less strained. I can enjoy the things that make Christmas, Christmas to me.