"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful." -Norman Vincent Peale
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Merry Christmas!
"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful." -Norman Vincent Peale
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Bopping Around My Christmas Tree.....Come Look!
I finally corralled the fandamily and got them to put ornaments on the Christmas tree last Sunday night.
I sat and took pictures and supervised.
Yah, that's what I am good at....supervising. You know....telling everyone to put it to the left, or to the right, or on a different branch, or change the hanger wire from a green one to a silver one because God Bless Us Everyone, we are using the white tree not the green one this year!
What would they do without my Great Help?!?!?
I let the kids and Hubs put up the ornaments. This generally means we have TONS of ornament from when the kids were little-- homemade/crafty ones from Pre-School and such when their manual dexterity was questionable(which I love!), the ornaments from when they were born, and things like what you see in #2 son's hands above....Big Bird, Dudley the Dragon, Thomas the Tank Engine, Cat/Dog and Pokemon!
Yes, nothing says Christmas like a Furby ornament on the tree!lol
And then Hubs will put up about 3-4 ornaments as his contribution.....all baseball themed.
Then after they are done and leave, I get to move things around and fill in with a few ornaments from when I was a kid or ones that have been gifted to me.
Since we have bought tree ornaments every year, from 1 to 8 or so each Christmas, since we were married in 1982, we have way more ornies that we can fit on the tree at one time. So ornies seem to go into rotation now and only a few reappear every year.
And last year, after we went to Virginia and retrieved all the family ornaments my mother kept, that had been hidden away in my oldest brother's attic(where they have been since she passed away in 2000), I now have even MORE ornaments to deal with!
I know that once my 3 kids set up their own households I'll have plenty to divide amongst them. Instead of fighting over who gets which, they'll be fighting over who has to taken MORE ornaments!lol
Now if you thought I was a tad on the OCD side with organizing, I give you my mother's ornament box......
No plastic store-bought ornament storage box for her!
The box from my Easy-Bake Oven I got for Christmas when I was 7 did just fine.
Inside she labeled the ornaments....
Not only a name for each ornament but the year she bought them and a drawing of what each one looked like.
And even some really old glass ornaments from her mother, my grandmother & grandfather's tree dating back to when they married in 1930.
And here is a tour around our Christmas tree this year.
This one was a gift for me. I wonder why someone would give me this...do you? ;-)
Thankfully the Mets actually won the World Series back in '86 so we could have this beauty on our tree....
This one we picked up last summer during our latest trip to Maine. A moose in waders holding a lobster says it all for me.
This felt mouse was made by my mother when I was in grade school. The PTA ladies made Christmas ornaments to sell at a school bazaar. My mom made these as well as Lions and some other critters.
This is a teeny tiny plastic Nativity scene. We have about 5 of these. When I was in 1st grade we had to sell Christmas stuff for a school fundraiser. I had this ginormous box of paper, tags, cards and little tchotchkes that I had to haul from door-to-door to sell. The nuns nagged at us every day to get out there and sell, sell, SELL!! What a bunch of pushy broads....
I don't recall the dollar amount I sold but I remember it was a large sum in my 6 year old brain.
I turned in my bulging money envelope and had visions of a big BIG prize as a reward.
The prizes were lined up along a big table from smallest value to the big prize-a bicycle!
The fundraiser nun tallied up my coins and pointed down to the end of the table to the last 2 or 3 items.
For all my efforts, I had enough points for these 5 teeny nativities.
I bet nobody earned enough to get that bicycle. It was just a visual "come on" to get you to sell more every week you walked past the table and drooled at it.
Nuns in my past often weren't totally straight with you. It reminds me of the time Hubs and I worked the Festival at the local Church and I manned the "Pick a Ticket" booth. The "come on" I was suppose to use was that if you picked a ticket that ended with "00" you were suppose to win a prize. But not every ticket that ended with 00 was associated with a prize. Long story short, there was deceit involved and it left a bad taste in my mouth....but that's another story for another time.
I was sorely disappointed in my prize.....but my mother kept them for all those years.
Then we have this beauty from my Daughter's pre-teen years.....
And then we have ornies with photos of days gone by in them.....
And after holding 2 Toiletries Sales this summer, I had to put this one on the tree....
Here's one I made back before I had kids. I made crafts and sold them to shops and at craft shows. We had gotten some sand dollars down at the beach. I painted them with pearlescent white paint and added red stain ribbon and bows. Easy and classy looking....
Along with my mom's box of ornies was a smaller box of ornaments my brother had saved. Most of them were ones I had gifted to him over the years. Here is one from a set of fabric stuffed Santas I had made him while in high school....
And here is an ornament my mother made for my Daughter when she was very small. (It's hard to see some of it because of the angle.) My Daughter's nickname was "Slugbaby". My mom got an empty ornament ball and filled it with a paper angel looking over a slug. Since she lived far away from her grandkids, the Angel was Grandma watching over her Slugbaby. lol
Here is one of my favorite ornaments. My oldest son had problems sitting still in school when he was very small. He wasn't ADD or ADHD but he was ACTIVE and had no patience for cutting, gluing, coloring, etc. This is one of the 1st ornaments he every made. I think someone else cut out the snowman shape but he hacked up the paper to make the mosaic design.....and I am sure he had a story to go with why the snowman needed a third eye....
And of course, Spider-man is right at home swinging among the branches.....
And Spidey has foes lurking within the branches.......use the force Spidey, the force!
Here's another school craft my mom made. These dolls are cardboard form and fabric scraps, yarn hair and you Mod Podge it all. Very homemade looking but cuter than it appears in the photo....
This is an ornament I bought my mother from a fellow vendor back in my Craft Show days. She made beautiful blown egg ornaments, decked out with decals and rhinestones and about 20 layers of sealant. There are little metal bells hanging from a chain below the egg. These were quite exquisite and cost me dearly back when we didn't have much money. I didn't even buy myself one back then. But now I have my mom's.
And it just wouldn't be our Christmas tree without at least 1 Power Ranger.....
I am off now to make some new Christmas memories.
We here at Chez Sluggy wish you and yours a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Yule or whatever Holiday you celebrate.
Sluggy
I sat and took pictures and supervised.
Yah, that's what I am good at....supervising. You know....telling everyone to put it to the left, or to the right, or on a different branch, or change the hanger wire from a green one to a silver one because God Bless Us Everyone, we are using the white tree not the green one this year!
What would they do without my Great Help?!?!?
Yes, nothing says Christmas like a Furby ornament on the tree!lol
And then Hubs will put up about 3-4 ornaments as his contribution.....all baseball themed.
Then after they are done and leave, I get to move things around and fill in with a few ornaments from when I was a kid or ones that have been gifted to me.
Since we have bought tree ornaments every year, from 1 to 8 or so each Christmas, since we were married in 1982, we have way more ornies that we can fit on the tree at one time. So ornies seem to go into rotation now and only a few reappear every year.
And last year, after we went to Virginia and retrieved all the family ornaments my mother kept, that had been hidden away in my oldest brother's attic(where they have been since she passed away in 2000), I now have even MORE ornaments to deal with!
I know that once my 3 kids set up their own households I'll have plenty to divide amongst them. Instead of fighting over who gets which, they'll be fighting over who has to taken MORE ornaments!lol
Now if you thought I was a tad on the OCD side with organizing, I give you my mother's ornament box......
The box from my Easy-Bake Oven I got for Christmas when I was 7 did just fine.
Inside she labeled the ornaments....
And even some really old glass ornaments from her mother, my grandmother & grandfather's tree dating back to when they married in 1930.
And here is a tour around our Christmas tree this year.
This one was a gift for me. I wonder why someone would give me this...do you? ;-)
This one we picked up last summer during our latest trip to Maine. A moose in waders holding a lobster says it all for me.
This felt mouse was made by my mother when I was in grade school. The PTA ladies made Christmas ornaments to sell at a school bazaar. My mom made these as well as Lions and some other critters.
This is a teeny tiny plastic Nativity scene. We have about 5 of these. When I was in 1st grade we had to sell Christmas stuff for a school fundraiser. I had this ginormous box of paper, tags, cards and little tchotchkes that I had to haul from door-to-door to sell. The nuns nagged at us every day to get out there and sell, sell, SELL!! What a bunch of pushy broads....
I don't recall the dollar amount I sold but I remember it was a large sum in my 6 year old brain.
I turned in my bulging money envelope and had visions of a big BIG prize as a reward.
The prizes were lined up along a big table from smallest value to the big prize-a bicycle!
The fundraiser nun tallied up my coins and pointed down to the end of the table to the last 2 or 3 items.
For all my efforts, I had enough points for these 5 teeny nativities.
I bet nobody earned enough to get that bicycle. It was just a visual "come on" to get you to sell more every week you walked past the table and drooled at it.
Nuns in my past often weren't totally straight with you. It reminds me of the time Hubs and I worked the Festival at the local Church and I manned the "Pick a Ticket" booth. The "come on" I was suppose to use was that if you picked a ticket that ended with "00" you were suppose to win a prize. But not every ticket that ended with 00 was associated with a prize. Long story short, there was deceit involved and it left a bad taste in my mouth....but that's another story for another time.
I was sorely disappointed in my prize.....but my mother kept them for all those years.
Then we have this beauty from my Daughter's pre-teen years.....
And then we have ornies with photos of days gone by in them.....
And after holding 2 Toiletries Sales this summer, I had to put this one on the tree....
Here's one I made back before I had kids. I made crafts and sold them to shops and at craft shows. We had gotten some sand dollars down at the beach. I painted them with pearlescent white paint and added red stain ribbon and bows. Easy and classy looking....
Along with my mom's box of ornies was a smaller box of ornaments my brother had saved. Most of them were ones I had gifted to him over the years. Here is one from a set of fabric stuffed Santas I had made him while in high school....
And here is an ornament my mother made for my Daughter when she was very small. (It's hard to see some of it because of the angle.) My Daughter's nickname was "Slugbaby". My mom got an empty ornament ball and filled it with a paper angel looking over a slug. Since she lived far away from her grandkids, the Angel was Grandma watching over her Slugbaby. lol
Here is one of my favorite ornaments. My oldest son had problems sitting still in school when he was very small. He wasn't ADD or ADHD but he was ACTIVE and had no patience for cutting, gluing, coloring, etc. This is one of the 1st ornaments he every made. I think someone else cut out the snowman shape but he hacked up the paper to make the mosaic design.....and I am sure he had a story to go with why the snowman needed a third eye....
And of course, Spider-man is right at home swinging among the branches.....
Here's another school craft my mom made. These dolls are cardboard form and fabric scraps, yarn hair and you Mod Podge it all. Very homemade looking but cuter than it appears in the photo....
This is an ornament I bought my mother from a fellow vendor back in my Craft Show days. She made beautiful blown egg ornaments, decked out with decals and rhinestones and about 20 layers of sealant. There are little metal bells hanging from a chain below the egg. These were quite exquisite and cost me dearly back when we didn't have much money. I didn't even buy myself one back then. But now I have my mom's.
And it just wouldn't be our Christmas tree without at least 1 Power Ranger.....
I am off now to make some new Christmas memories.
We here at Chez Sluggy wish you and yours a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Yule or whatever Holiday you celebrate.
Sluggy
Friday, December 23, 2011
2011 Review Extravaganza......July to September
I'm taking part in this 2011 Review Extravaganza from over at Mimi's Place, Living in France.
Here is the link to The Rules.
If you want to take part go read the rules and then link up each Friday in December.
And to read the folks participating, go click on the Extravaganza Button on my side bar.
Onward to my 3rd installment of the Review of 2011...the July to September months.
JULY
July was a very busy month here!
We started out the month at the halfway point of 2011. I did a check-up on my progress toward my GOALS for the Year.
The Garden started off Doing Great!
I continued earning some Coin on the Side.
I tried to become an Amazon Affiliate. This didn't work out very well as once it took effect, I could only post titles and no content on the blog. I then posted about 20 titles in one day trying to get it to work. HERE is one of those posts......HERE is another one. Funest day ever!
I finally held another Stockpile Sale. Here is the work I did to get THERE.
AUGUST
I did a little DIY in the Kitchen in August. Homemade Breakfast Sausage anyone?
Who could not love CUCUMBER P*RN?
Can you believe we held another Stockpile Sale?
We saw some more Decluttering P*rn this month.
We waved goodbye to Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Holly when we dropped off our Daughter to college for the first time.
And I ended the month talking about my Artistic Past.
SEPTEMBER
I dug out the trash and got #2 son's room cleaned. Most unusual garbage found?..... 52 Plastic Spoons.
Just into the month and our area was hit by the worst Flood since Hurricane Agnes-The Flood of 2011.
I reminisced about being Mortgage-free in one breath and having our house insurance cancelled in the next because I lost The Bill. bleh
I talked about the End of an Era-my Rite-Aid Pillaging.
As part of my effort to get rid of the rest of the eBay stock I had hanging around, I decided to hold a Garage Sale-styleToy Sale locally. I spent a large amount of time prepping for it like HERE.
We ended the month with a Lightning Strike!
What is in store for us after this?
Check back next Friday for Part 4 in the Series, where we dissect October to December.
Sluggy
Here is the link to The Rules.
If you want to take part go read the rules and then link up each Friday in December.
And to read the folks participating, go click on the Extravaganza Button on my side bar.
Onward to my 3rd installment of the Review of 2011...the July to September months.
JULY
July was a very busy month here!
We started out the month at the halfway point of 2011. I did a check-up on my progress toward my GOALS for the Year.
The Garden started off Doing Great!
I continued earning some Coin on the Side.
I tried to become an Amazon Affiliate. This didn't work out very well as once it took effect, I could only post titles and no content on the blog. I then posted about 20 titles in one day trying to get it to work. HERE is one of those posts......HERE is another one. Funest day ever!
I finally held another Stockpile Sale. Here is the work I did to get THERE.
AUGUST
I did a little DIY in the Kitchen in August. Homemade Breakfast Sausage anyone?
Who could not love CUCUMBER P*RN?
Can you believe we held another Stockpile Sale?
We saw some more Decluttering P*rn this month.
We waved goodbye to Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Holly when we dropped off our Daughter to college for the first time.
And I ended the month talking about my Artistic Past.
SEPTEMBER
I dug out the trash and got #2 son's room cleaned. Most unusual garbage found?..... 52 Plastic Spoons.
Just into the month and our area was hit by the worst Flood since Hurricane Agnes-The Flood of 2011.
I reminisced about being Mortgage-free in one breath and having our house insurance cancelled in the next because I lost The Bill. bleh
I talked about the End of an Era-my Rite-Aid Pillaging.
As part of my effort to get rid of the rest of the eBay stock I had hanging around, I decided to hold a Garage Sale-styleToy Sale locally. I spent a large amount of time prepping for it like HERE.
We ended the month with a Lightning Strike!
What is in store for us after this?
Check back next Friday for Part 4 in the Series, where we dissect October to December.
Sluggy
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
You Can't Take Me Anywhere!
We finally got the whole family in one room long enough to take Daughter out for her Birthday meal.
Of course, as is her bent, she picked the most expensive restaurant around here to celebrate in.
We've never been to a Benihana-style teppenyaki restaurant before.
You know....you sit at a table with a grill in the center and a chef cooks your food in front of you....a chef who makes it an entertainment by telling jokes, singing and throwing knives in the air.
So the five of us sat at a table and the meal began.
Now everyone in my little family has a great sense of humor. We are sarcastic but we aren't demonstrative and boisterous when it comes to partying.....well MOST of us aren't.
But once the chef started squirting sake into my mouth from the big squeeze bottle he toted around, let's just say I was feeling no pain after about 3 quirts. ;-)
Or as he kept saying, "Mo' sake, mo' happy!" lol
Now that my kids are grown or almost grown I can let my hair down a bit and be the wild party girl of my distant youth....much too their embarrassment.
The almost 16 year old wants to disown me.
The 19 year old told Facebook and appears to be proud of me.
The almost 21 year old wants to go do shots with me this summer.
I am not a bad drunk.
I am a quiet drunk who gets the giggles and then falls asleep after a very small amount of alcohol.
I loosened up and got "into" the experience.
I laughed and clapped.
I caught veggies in my mouth as they sailed through the air at me.
I caught sake in my mouth as it sailed through the air at me.
It was great and controlled until the chef pulled a rubber chicken out of the top of his toque.
That's when I lost my proverbial shit.
I got so tickled I couldn't stop laughing that contagious laugh that makes everyone else laugh. And then I see everyone else laughing so I laugh harder until my stomach hurts from laughing and I have tears rolling down my legs(yes, Judy, that's for you!).
Of course when you haven't eaten anything substantial and you've had SQUEEZE BOTTLE SAKE SHOTS for a half an hour and you can't hold your liquor, well.....it's not a pretty picture.
But it is HIGHLY amusing to all around you!
Hubs made me take my chopstick training wheels with me(a plastic thing to keep the sticks from separating that Asian people give to their toddlers to teach them how to eat with them). I had one gifted to me earlier this year by an Asian woman at a restaurant who felt sorry for my lack of skills.
The evening is rather fuzzy in my mind so I have NO clue what I am doing in this photo(yes, it's not very becoming of me, but what the hell)....or is that even my hand holding them? I just don't know.
Notice however #2 son trying to conceal his uncontrollable laughter at his inebriated mother who he has never seen tipsy before.
And here is the Birthday girl and her surprise dessert...
At any rate, she is laughing at me.
And no, I didn't abandon my family and go sit at the next table when our chef and his squeeze bottle of sake moved over there.
I do have SOME dignity left......maybe.
Being with my family was fun but I think next time I'll rather take some internet friends when I go. I know some you reading this would make wonderful dinner companions at a place like this.
And I promise to behave.....unless of course, the chef has a rubber chicken in his hat.
Sluggy
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Rambling Thoughts on Serial Layaway Benefactors, Gifts for Children & Our Society
There are articles circulating online about how people are going into random KMarts this holiday season and paying off complete strangers lay-away accounts for them.
I guess when people think about layaway they assume that these are people who don't have enough money to buy something and take it home right away. Instead layaway users have to put items on hold and pay in small weekly increments over the course of the layaway until the full bill is paid.
Use to be, "back in the day", layaway was the bastion of those lower on the socio-economic ladder who couldn't obtain credit cards... this was the poor man's answer to the credit card. And often layaways didn't get redeemed when weekly paychecks didn't stretch enough to cover necessary bills AND the holiday layaway gifts.
While many who are economically disadvantaged in this recession have embraced the return of the layaway(and cross their fingers that they'll have enough cash at the end of the paycheck to redeem their holiday loot), there is also a segment of society that isn't necessarily on the same rung of the income ladder, that also takes advantage of this method to obtain store bought goods....that group would be the frugal and the "anti-credit card" set.
Layaway can be a wonderful tool to buy without tapping into your savings upfront and tying up your ready cash. Face it, for many people taking savings to pay for gifts would be easy to do, but a tad risky. Say you used your emergency fund to buy Christmas toys for the kids and then you had a REAL emergency? You'd have no funds to fix the immediate crisis in your life.
By putting toys on layaway, if you are disciplined and make your weekly payments, you pay your bills on time AND end up with toys for under the tree. If that emergency happened whilst you were laying away the toys, and you ended up not being able to afford them after paying for the emergency, you'd just loose a small fee you paid to open the layaway account and any balance you had paid on the toys would be refunded to you. You'd still have no gifts but that's a much saner price to pay than having a pile of gifts while being evicted from your apartment because you used your cash and now can't pay your rent.
It's a much more sensible way to try to obtain the 'wants' at the Holidays without going into massive debt.
On a side note(which has little to do with my main point here), there was a part in the article that I found disconcerting......(I've X'ed out her last name and city as to NOT embarrass her because she SHOULD be embarrassed by this.)
"Dona XXXXX, an Xxxx nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son. “I was speechless,” XXXXX said. “It made me believe in Christmas again.”"
WTF?!?!
I don't care if the person who laid away this lot of items brings home a 6 figure salary or barely clears $200 a week working part time as a dishwasher, NOBODY'S 4 year old kid needs $200 in toys at Christmas!
There.
I've said it.
I'm the big bad old meany Scrooge woman.
I don't know.....that part of the article was very disturbing to me. And she's a nurse, so she isn't rolling in dough anyway...why overspend like that? Is she trying to buy her kid's love? Is she trying to raise the next Veruca Salt?
Do the majority of parents in this country think this way?.....spending that much on a 4 year old? If so I know why this country is circling the crapper.....
I just think that OVERGIFTING your child at a young age(either in number of items or amount spent on them), sets up unrealistic expectations as they grow.
$200 spent on a 4 year old.
Then when they are say, 10, there is pressure on the parent and expectation by the child of what?....$500 worth of "stuff".....$1000?!?!
Having lived through the "kids and Christmas" years I feel I have some wisdom on this point, and can give the new moms and dads out there some advise when it comes to spending on kids at the Holidays.
I hear all the time how "it's our child's 1st Christmas and we want to make it SPECIAL for them!".
First off, if it's your kid's 1st Christmas then they are obviously under 1 yr. old. A baby will NOT remember their 1st Christmas so the only ones these parents are making it SPECIAL for is themselves and maybe the Grandparents.
Get over it.
Yes, your baby will eventually see their 1st Christmas in family photos or videos, but they won't have memories of this time. So don't kill yourself and your bank account going overboard with presents and stuff.
Give the babies lots of attention, some shiny stuff to look at, some nice music to stimulate their senses and take lots of photos/videos!
That's all they NEED.
If you feel the need to spend, buy some savings bonds or put some money in their 529 accounts as it's a much better way to spend on their Holiday.
I have found that it's appropriate and much more sane to gift your kids an equal number of presents as their numerical age.
A 1 yr. old or younger needs 1 gift/toy.
A 2 yr. old can handle 2 toys.
A 3 yr. old?....3 toys.
Up until the age of 5 or 6, this works well.
And I don't mean CLOTHING here.....it HAS TO BE A TOY!
Limited toys means the child doesn't go into sensory overload and you avoid meltdowns on Christmas morning.
If the relatives and grandma/grandpa won't take no for an answer and limit the number of gifts, then spread the opening through out the day. Or better yet, throughout the week, by giving the child a new present to unwrap each morning after breakfast or lunch or dinner.
In fact, since most grandparents of small children do tend to want to overdue the gifts at Christmas, if I had it to do over again, I'd not buy any toys for my kids at Christmas and just use the Grandparents gifts up until a certain age.
This would give you plenty of toys for the kids and help you parents save a few bucks and put it into savings or toward a down payment for a house or pay off some debt. Young families tend to be more apt to be struggling to move up the economic prosperity ladder anyway, so any savings on spending is a good thing for the whole family!
Limiting the number of gifts/toys also helps the child to appreciate the ones they do get. There is nothing worse than a jaded 6 year old, surrounded by a pile of spent wrapping paper and toys grumbling 30 minutes into the Christmas morning melee that they are bored with nothing to play with.
And yes, I know because I have seen this....not My kids but someone else's little brat.lol
And yes, they were a brat but they didn't start out as one....it took 5 years of bad parenting & 5 Christmases of overindulgence to get that way. ;-)
And give age appropriate gifts always!
Only one time did I NOT follow this advise. The year my oldest son wanted a Nintendo Gameboy Color(back in the day). He was wild for this new Pokemon deal and as he was a good reader in 1st grade Santa got him one with a Pokemon game. (And yes, he only got 4 Santa gifts that year as those 2 were quite expensive.)
His younger sister, who was in Pre-K, wanted everything he wanted and was also into Pokemon. She however couldn't read well enough yet to use a Gameboy, but we knew all heck would break loose if Santa didn't bring her one too with the same game.
So I bought what was at the time an expensive electronic device for a child who was not old enough to fully use the thing.
But.....it worked out well. Because even though she couldn't read well, it helped push her to learn quicker so she could play this game. Plus her brother would assist her in reading the screen as they would sit side-by-side and play them.
And the oldest also benefited from this arrangement, as he had trouble following directions at that age and would often get worked up. His sister, ever the calm, logically minded child, would help him follow the exact order of the game's progression.
This, at first, ill conceived purchase helped them with teamwork skills.
Happy, happy accident....oldest learned to follow directions better, sister advanced to reading earlier and both of those electronic toys were cherished and lasted many many years.
Sluggy
I guess when people think about layaway they assume that these are people who don't have enough money to buy something and take it home right away. Instead layaway users have to put items on hold and pay in small weekly increments over the course of the layaway until the full bill is paid.
Use to be, "back in the day", layaway was the bastion of those lower on the socio-economic ladder who couldn't obtain credit cards... this was the poor man's answer to the credit card. And often layaways didn't get redeemed when weekly paychecks didn't stretch enough to cover necessary bills AND the holiday layaway gifts.
While many who are economically disadvantaged in this recession have embraced the return of the layaway(and cross their fingers that they'll have enough cash at the end of the paycheck to redeem their holiday loot), there is also a segment of society that isn't necessarily on the same rung of the income ladder, that also takes advantage of this method to obtain store bought goods....that group would be the frugal and the "anti-credit card" set.
Layaway can be a wonderful tool to buy without tapping into your savings upfront and tying up your ready cash. Face it, for many people taking savings to pay for gifts would be easy to do, but a tad risky. Say you used your emergency fund to buy Christmas toys for the kids and then you had a REAL emergency? You'd have no funds to fix the immediate crisis in your life.
By putting toys on layaway, if you are disciplined and make your weekly payments, you pay your bills on time AND end up with toys for under the tree. If that emergency happened whilst you were laying away the toys, and you ended up not being able to afford them after paying for the emergency, you'd just loose a small fee you paid to open the layaway account and any balance you had paid on the toys would be refunded to you. You'd still have no gifts but that's a much saner price to pay than having a pile of gifts while being evicted from your apartment because you used your cash and now can't pay your rent.
It's a much more sensible way to try to obtain the 'wants' at the Holidays without going into massive debt.
On a side note(which has little to do with my main point here), there was a part in the article that I found disconcerting......(I've X'ed out her last name and city as to NOT embarrass her because she SHOULD be embarrassed by this.)
"Dona XXXXX, an Xxxx nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son. “I was speechless,” XXXXX said. “It made me believe in Christmas again.”"
WTF?!?!
I don't care if the person who laid away this lot of items brings home a 6 figure salary or barely clears $200 a week working part time as a dishwasher, NOBODY'S 4 year old kid needs $200 in toys at Christmas!
There.
I've said it.
I'm the big bad old meany Scrooge woman.
I don't know.....that part of the article was very disturbing to me. And she's a nurse, so she isn't rolling in dough anyway...why overspend like that? Is she trying to buy her kid's love? Is she trying to raise the next Veruca Salt?
Do the majority of parents in this country think this way?.....spending that much on a 4 year old? If so I know why this country is circling the crapper.....
I just think that OVERGIFTING your child at a young age(either in number of items or amount spent on them), sets up unrealistic expectations as they grow.
$200 spent on a 4 year old.
Then when they are say, 10, there is pressure on the parent and expectation by the child of what?....$500 worth of "stuff".....$1000?!?!
Having lived through the "kids and Christmas" years I feel I have some wisdom on this point, and can give the new moms and dads out there some advise when it comes to spending on kids at the Holidays.
I hear all the time how "it's our child's 1st Christmas and we want to make it SPECIAL for them!".
First off, if it's your kid's 1st Christmas then they are obviously under 1 yr. old. A baby will NOT remember their 1st Christmas so the only ones these parents are making it SPECIAL for is themselves and maybe the Grandparents.
Get over it.
Yes, your baby will eventually see their 1st Christmas in family photos or videos, but they won't have memories of this time. So don't kill yourself and your bank account going overboard with presents and stuff.
Give the babies lots of attention, some shiny stuff to look at, some nice music to stimulate their senses and take lots of photos/videos!
That's all they NEED.
If you feel the need to spend, buy some savings bonds or put some money in their 529 accounts as it's a much better way to spend on their Holiday.
I have found that it's appropriate and much more sane to gift your kids an equal number of presents as their numerical age.
A 1 yr. old or younger needs 1 gift/toy.
A 2 yr. old can handle 2 toys.
A 3 yr. old?....3 toys.
Up until the age of 5 or 6, this works well.
And I don't mean CLOTHING here.....it HAS TO BE A TOY!
Limited toys means the child doesn't go into sensory overload and you avoid meltdowns on Christmas morning.
If the relatives and grandma/grandpa won't take no for an answer and limit the number of gifts, then spread the opening through out the day. Or better yet, throughout the week, by giving the child a new present to unwrap each morning after breakfast or lunch or dinner.
In fact, since most grandparents of small children do tend to want to overdue the gifts at Christmas, if I had it to do over again, I'd not buy any toys for my kids at Christmas and just use the Grandparents gifts up until a certain age.
This would give you plenty of toys for the kids and help you parents save a few bucks and put it into savings or toward a down payment for a house or pay off some debt. Young families tend to be more apt to be struggling to move up the economic prosperity ladder anyway, so any savings on spending is a good thing for the whole family!
Limiting the number of gifts/toys also helps the child to appreciate the ones they do get. There is nothing worse than a jaded 6 year old, surrounded by a pile of spent wrapping paper and toys grumbling 30 minutes into the Christmas morning melee that they are bored with nothing to play with.
And yes, I know because I have seen this....not My kids but someone else's little brat.lol
And yes, they were a brat but they didn't start out as one....it took 5 years of bad parenting & 5 Christmases of overindulgence to get that way. ;-)
And give age appropriate gifts always!
Only one time did I NOT follow this advise. The year my oldest son wanted a Nintendo Gameboy Color(back in the day). He was wild for this new Pokemon deal and as he was a good reader in 1st grade Santa got him one with a Pokemon game. (And yes, he only got 4 Santa gifts that year as those 2 were quite expensive.)
His younger sister, who was in Pre-K, wanted everything he wanted and was also into Pokemon. She however couldn't read well enough yet to use a Gameboy, but we knew all heck would break loose if Santa didn't bring her one too with the same game.
So I bought what was at the time an expensive electronic device for a child who was not old enough to fully use the thing.
But.....it worked out well. Because even though she couldn't read well, it helped push her to learn quicker so she could play this game. Plus her brother would assist her in reading the screen as they would sit side-by-side and play them.
And the oldest also benefited from this arrangement, as he had trouble following directions at that age and would often get worked up. His sister, ever the calm, logically minded child, would help him follow the exact order of the game's progression.
This, at first, ill conceived purchase helped them with teamwork skills.
Happy, happy accident....oldest learned to follow directions better, sister advanced to reading earlier and both of those electronic toys were cherished and lasted many many years.
Sluggy
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