How Did You Do?
In the spirit of frugality, time over money, gift-giving, the economy, and my own poverty party, I decided to add up all receipts and what man hours I was aware of to give a total of the Christmas Pan and I had. So, here we go….
32 total gifts given
$207.11 spent
80+ man hours of baking, building, painting, photoshopping, framing, ripping/burning, writing, etc.
All in all, I think we did very well and had a wonderful Christmas season that was rewarding in so many ways. So, I pass the mic to you. How did you do? Let us all know!
December 28th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
zomg you did awesome. i, on the other hand, am broke. trying to be really frugal now until i have enough money acquired to pay next month’s rent. christmas was great though, and i got everyone what they wanted. presents for 20 people, about $900 spent, 5 hours of candy making and wrapping. 500,000 calories consumed by the total of candy recipients. ok that one i made up. but it might not be wrong.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:49 am
See, I was broke before Christmas so I had to be as inventive and as creative as possible. One of the biggest money savers was on wrapping and such.
All distributed baked goods were given in cookie tins my folks had saved for years and had no idea what to do with. We cleaned them really good, lined them with some Christmas red wax paper, and put the cookies in holiday themed cupcake trays found at Family Dollar.
As for wrapping, we just wrapped everything in newspaper (New York Times, to be exact) and used leftover ribbon from the wrapping center at the mall. They were going to throw it away because they didn’t know what to do with it.
As for calories? I’ll let you know when I am done consuming!
December 29th, 2008 at 8:52 am
When you live in another country people don’t expect you to ship Xmas presents, so I only bought things for Husband. Just a bunch of dark chocolate which he likes and some little fun stuff. And made his favorite dish for Xmas dinner. Not too expensive!
We got an amazing gift basket from my boss though which had all these fancy jams in it so that was totally sweet.
December 29th, 2008 at 9:38 am
What is his favorite dish and would you care to guest post and share the recipe? yummeeeee times!
Where was the basket from? A local store?
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni/Manicotti, I would be happy to guest post it : )
IM me, I don’t think I have a current email for you!
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
PS – I don’t know where the gift basket came from but it was yum