The MomSpeak

After being inspired by some other bloggers’ creative home displays of their children’s preshus weshus artwork, I recently decided that yes! I can totally do that! I shall build my own preschooler art museum and it will be ADORABLE and CLEVER and my house shall be transformed into the Pottery Barn catalog’s version of a house with kids instead of the real version, which is more like “deathtrap obstacle course of primary-colored clutter.”

(You know where this is going, right? I mean, even I’m yelling GIRLPLEASE at myself already.)

So I went out and bought some square cork tiles and self-adhesive safe-for-painted-walls double-sided sticky things. I dutifully applied the sticky things by the dozen to six of the cork tiles, carefully and painstakingly pressed them to the wall with a level and a measuring tape and then selected the best of my son’s artwork to proudly display with some super-cute thumbtacks.

Thanks to a bunch of sick kids and way too many work deadlines to count, I’m still holiday shopping for a few friends and their kids. And while I generally do everything online, I’ve hit the point where shipping something will now cost me my first born child. Not to fret, however, because sometimes the simplest gift, like a book, can be the best.

That being said, a wrapped up book or one stuffed in a gift bag can sometimes look a little chinsy. So along with giving some of my favorite books, all of which I can grab at my local bookseller, I’m adding a little something extra that’s inspired by the words themselves to make it personal and a bit more special.

For the little one

Kit Allen’s adorable “Long John’s” board book is a fave in our house. Pair it with a fun pajama set from Old Navy.

For the princess obsessed preschooler

We always get a hearty chuckle after readinng Robert Munsch’s “Paper Bag Princess.” Pair it with a tiara and a wand.

So a few weeks ago I read the lovely Asha’s entry about free alternatives to traditional gift wrap. And I loved it. So much that I even bookmarked it, for future wrapping reference.

I was especially charmed with the idea of recycling my preschooler’s art projects, although I was annoyed to find that a good 80% of MY preschooler’s art projects involved non-wrapping friendly materials. (Seriously, preschool, enough with the popsicle sticks.) But I managed to find enough to wrap the grandparents’ gifts at least, and if there’s anyone else who will be especially charmed by a few crayon marks and glitter glue on a piece of construction paper, it’s the grandparents.

(Speaking of toddler masterpieces, next week’s edition of How Not To Do Things will cover my recent attempt at creating a clever little crafty “art museum” display in our kitchen.)

(SPOILER ALERT: Disastrous. I am Martha Stewart’s worst nightmare.)

But this morning, with 15 minute to spare before a preschool classmate’s birthday party, I realized I needed to wrap a present. And…well, if you could use another reason to eschew wrapping paper in favor of Asha’s ideas (and the many additional tips from the comment section), LOOK NO FURTHER THAN MEEE.

Confession: coupons make me nervous.

Not AS A CONCEPT or anything. I’m not scared of barcodes, like this one kid I knew in high school whose mother was convinced that stuff like credit cards and supermarket scanners were predictions from the Book of Revelations about the End Times. He seriously was scared of barcodes. And his mother, frankly. I think we all were.

No, coupons make me nervous because of all the fine print. All the expiration dates and exclusions and limitations. I read and reread them, convinced that I’ve missed something.  THEY FREAK ME OUT, PEOPLE.

My current anxiety about coupons most certainly does NOT come from my childhood. My mother was the best coupon-clipper I have ever known. She dutifully went through the paper and the circulars every week and clipped clipped clipped and filed them neatly into her wallet-like coupon organizer. I used to beg to help her, and I’d sit at the kitchen table scanning the pages for grocery items I recognized, proudly announcing each relevant coupon I found as I neatly cut it out and filed it into the appropriate category in the organizer. At the store, it was my job to go through it and find any coupons we could use, and double-check the expiration dates. I would hand them to the cashier with confidence. Coupons were easier, back then, somehow.

 

Ah, the holiday letter. That self-congratulatory Christmas card photocopy supplement  crowing about the family’s Nobel- and Olympic-level accomplishments over the past year. So ostentatious. So presumptuous. And so fun to read!

C’mon, admit it! You love holiday letters! I know I do. I can’t wait to hear about how much the kids have grown, and how the job’s going, and what the adventures have been. If the sender threw in a few pictures, all the better.

In my experience, very few holiday letters actually fit the obnoxious stereotype. After all, the people who send us cards ARE our friends, and it’s nice to read a little more about them than “Sincerely, Bill and Janet.” I especially love getting letters from the folks I hear from once a year. Some of my oldest friendships are sustained by the annual holiday letter, and that’s just fine with me.

A couple of years ago I sent out a holiday letter in lieu of cards. I had a great time taping a collage-like collection of photos, ribbons, fortune cookie inserts to a blank piece of printer paper. I then hand wrote a letter in the spaces that were left on the page. I took the whole thing to Kinko’s, made 100 copies onto colored paper, and only paid about $10. I didn’t even stuff the letters into envelopes. I added a personal note to each, tri-folded them, secured them with stickers, stamped and addressed them and sent them out.

I admit that I have spent way too many pennies on my kids’ Christmas outfits in years past. Lovely as they were, the truth of the matter is that they didn’t wear them enough to warrant how much I spent. Not even for that one prized photo with Santa Claus. I suppose it’s a little hard to wear velvet to the playground and then again to bed, but for what I shelled out, that’s the only way I would have gotten my money’s worth.

Since adding another kid to my brood and holding my wallet a bit tighter these days, I’ve learned that your kids can still sport festive and fantastic holiday outfits without you having pay out the nose. With a little creativity and smart shopping, you can find items that will look great on Christmas Day and some random day in February.

Just say “no” to velvet

Just because the dress is beautiful does not mean your kid will want to wear it. Not only can the fancy attire be terribly uncomfortable for your kid, but they’re darn hard to keep clean. For girls, search for a simple red, white, or even black cotton or cotton blend dress that will look great in pictures, but won’t cause them to have major tantrums after wearing it for fifteen minutes. When it comes to your little boy, grab simple basics that he’ll be able to wear for other formal functions; a white or blue button down shirt and khaki pants can go a long way.

With the economy tanking like it is, it’s no wonder that shoppers everywhere are tightening their purse strings and slashing their holiday budgets. But that doesn’t mean you can’t spread some Christmas cheer all around.  Here are some ways you can stretch your budget and still give unique, thoughtful presents to the people you care about most:

1) Know before you go.  Start your gift-giving season my making a list and checking it twice.  If you know exactly who you’re getting presents for and how much you want to spend, you’re less likely to succumb to panic buys or impulse buys. 

2) To clamp down on overspending, consider getting together with family members and setting some limits on the kinds of gifts you buy for each other:

* Set a dollar limit — $10, $20 
* Set a category limit — For example, declare 2008 to be the Year of the Book or the Great Cookie Exchange.
* Set an age limit — Give presents only to family members under 18.  
* Set a person limit — Take a cue from your office Secret Santa; each family member draws just 1 gift recipient from out of a hat.

Who knows, you could start a new family gift-giving tradition that saves you (and your entire family) some money every year.

Who doesn’t love hand-me-downs, right? I love hand-me-downs. I spent my first pregnancy almost exclusively in a friend’s maternity clothing, accepted all of my sister’s maternity clothing before we were even officially thinking of trying for a second baby, and then when those clothes turned out to be off-season for my second summer pregnancy (gah and argh and damn), I was still exceedingly happy to lovingly hand them off to other pregnant friends.

So when the wife of one of my husband’s coworkers asked if I would want any of her son’s baby clothes, I immediately said yes! yes! How kind, how lovely!

She smiled (POSSIBLY EVILY. I SHOULD HAVE PAID ATTENTION.) and said she would send the clothing to the office with her husband. I imagined a few sleepers. Probably some onesies and a lot of unworn hats, since we all end up with about four frillion of those. And I sometimes wonder if any infant outside of Alaska has ever actually worn a newborn-sized snowsuit, or if we’ve all just been handing the same four or five snowsuits around to fellow parents for the last few decades.

I didn’t do it last year, and I felt so great about it, I’m never doing it again.

I didn’t buy a shred of wrapping paper.

Now I love beautifully-wrapped gift as much as the next guy, but buying paper specifically produced to be thrown away? Between the Earth’s stretched resources and my stretched budget, there’s just no way.

Are you with me on this one? Give it a try this year. A few ideas:

Craft paper. My daughter has an easel which uses an attached roll of recycled newsprint. She draws or paints, then pulls the roll revealing new paper. But what to do with the miles of resulting art? Turn it into custom wrapping for the grandparents’ gifts. Same deal with the art projects that come home from school.

Second-hand scarves. I know someone who picks up Goodwill scarves — the more garish the better — for pennies apiece and then uses them to wrap gifts. Also: baby blankets.

Are your closets full of adorable outfits that your daughter only wore a few times?  How about those special occasion shoes that your son wore to a family event and then promptly outgrew before he could wear them again?  Or maybe you have Halloween costumes from years past stored away in the attic?  My guess is that your house is full of gently-used children’s items that you no longer need.  I am also willing to bet that many of your Mama friends find themselves in the same situation.

Why let these items gather dust when you can “swap” them with friends for things that your kids could actually use?  You may have heard of national services such as Freecycle where you can list and find gently-used items.  Why not use the same concept to swap children’s items right in your neighborhood? 

Here are a few simple tips for organizing a “swap” of children’s items with your friends.