I'm glad to see you have braved the snow today! Come on in and make yourself at home. Are you having problems finding gifts for some of your family and friends? It is so hard to shop for someone who has everything they need. Well, over the past few years we have come up with a couple ideas that seem to be working.

Have a seat while I get you some hot chocolate. Then we can visit.



Every year it seems to be getting hard to find gifts for our siblings, parents and grandparents. We ended up finding solutions for all of them but it was NOT one size fits all. My mom worked for Headstart as a teacher until she retired. Before that she worked at a daycare for mentally and physically disabled children (4-5 yr. old room). My sister works for a county agency in what is kind of a social worker/ educator position. She helps families who have or are expecting a baby with a disabilty or premature baby to a teen. During my college years I work for the local Salvation Army in their office but spent my holiday breaks volunteering to help them hand out or deliver items to those in need while crashing on the Caption and his wife's couch at night (dorms were closed over break). I also went on a couple missonary trips to Haiti during those same years. For my family we have seen people in try need first hand. The best gift we could give each, is NOTHING. We just want to enjoy our time together.

So what do we do? We decided as family that we would adopt a family in the county we grew up in for Christmas. My mom is still friend's with the local social worker. She always has a family that has fallen through the cracks and was not able to get help through the normal channels. She gives us the needed info (age, sex, clothing size, etc). We intern find a day we can all go shopping together as family. We make it a fun outing and spend the amount of money we would have other wise spent on ourselves. By the end of the day we have a car load of gifts for the kids and food for the pantry. All of us wish we could be a fly on the wall when those kids open their gifts to see their expressions. But just knowing that we made what could have been a very sad Christmas into a day of joy and thanksgiving is priceless. For our family we look forward to doing this every year.

On Christmas morning at my parent's house there are only a few presents for each of the grandkids. And that is it. Everyone is happy and know one misses the gifts that could have been. We just greatful for the opportunity to spent time together and give to those in need.

Do you give the gift of giving? Have you ever given to a charity in a friend or family's name for Christmas? How did they like or dislike the gift?

Well, it's getting late and baby needs to go to bed. I'll have to visit with you tomorrow about what we do for my husband's side of the family. Be safe on your way home!

Can you believe how fast time flies? Saturday was the feast day of Saint Nicholas! I'm sure most of you are scratching your heads right now going "huh?". Well, for those of you who have not figured it out yet, we are Catholic. I don't want to spend to much time explaining our faith and the Churches doctorine so if you have questions feel free to email us or do a google search (but please only read creditable sources). But the world's beloved Santa Claus is actually a true saint, Saint Nicholas.

The Church celebrates the feast day of St. Nicholas on December 6th. St. Nicholas was a wonderful man who did countless good deeds. Two of the things he was most know for was giving the poor money and protecting children. Centries later we have spinned the truth so much that we have ended up with a Santa who seems to have different motives on a different day.

Our house is different.



We have started a new tradition to combate the comercialization and greediness surrounding gift giving. Every year we celebrate St. Nick's feast day in a big way. We start be reading the kids stories of the saint's good deads. We have a few activities like coloring pictures. Then we bake our Christmas cookies for the year. And we bake a lot of them! What do we do with them? Do we keep them all for ourselves? No way, in fact we barely keep any of them. I usually keep one or two dozen, but the rest we give away.

Where do they all go? To the people that St. Nicholas would want to have them. We take them to our elderly neighbors (5 couples) who are basically shut-ins during the winter because of all the snow and ice we get. Then we take the rest of them to true shut-ins. I call our Church office in advance (or that morning) and get a list of people along with addresses and phone numbers. Everyone is so excited to see to see a young kids at their day with fresh baked cookies. Of course they are more excited to have companionship during the cold months. If you do this, please allow enough time at each stop. Most people would like for you to stay 30 minutes or more. They really are lonely and love to watch the kids play.

This is a great chance for kids to see what the true meaning of Christmas is. Our goal is for our children to understand that it is okay to only get a few small gifts. It's really about what you GIVE not recieve. Last year our daughter meet a lady who was excited to see us and was talking about how lonely she was since her husband died. She didn't have any family left in the area and could not get out because it was to cold. After we left my daughter had a lot of questions about the lady and her husband. Even though some of those questions I would rather avoid, it was a great learning experience for her. She felt good that she made the lady happy that day.

This is one the most important days of the holiday in our home. It is a tradition that our children will remember. It is also a tradition that only takes some flour, a little gas, and your time. The spiritual and emotional benefits are countless and down playing of recieving gifts is priceless.

Some of you might be thinking that this is a great idea, if I was Catholic. You don't have to be Catholic to explain the real Santa to your kids. If you would rather not, that is okay to. Just pick a day before Christmas to explain the giving part of the season and then do just that with your kids, grandkids, neices or nephews, or even the neighbor kids.

Did you celebrate St. Nicholas's feast day on Saturday? If so what did you do?

Are you ready for some more hot chocolate? I sure am! Just looking out the window at the snow this evening is making me cold.

What have you been up to today? I've been busy working on putting together Christmas present's while my oldest was at school. Why don't you sit right there and I want to show you how I reused some of my Christmas cards from last year. Hold on while I go grab the box...




Being the thrifty green mom that I am, I save every card, gift bag, box, tissue paper, and sometimes even wrapping paper. This project is one of my favorites. I took a nice shirt box that came from a store and I cover the advertising on it with a reused Christmas card. Here is one that I made for a friend.

Wonder what is going in the box? Some homemade T-shirt bags from Relay for Life shirts I found at a garage sale. My friend's dad had cancer and she is a big supporter of Relay for Life (and a fellow green mom) so I thought that she would enjoy the message while saving the planet one shopping bag at a time.

I have so many other crafty ways to reuse Christmas cards! I just wish it was not getting so late. Why don't you come on back tomorrow to visit some more.

See you soon!

So glad to see you again! Of course you can have hot chocolate. Doesn't the fire smell good tonight? We have to make sure not to start the fire until after the baby's in bed. Now that she is crawling and trying to walk we can not keep her out of anything! That reminds me of another thrifty thing we are doing this year...



With the baby getting into everything this year we made a tough decision. We are NOT putting up our big Christmas tree. This could have been a devastating blow to our 5 yr. old daughter, but we had another plan up our sleeve. In stead of the normal Christmas tree we are doing a traditional Jesse Tree that sits up high out of the baby's reach. Our daughter colored and cut out all the ornaments for the tree herself. Every night we read from the bible as a family and discuss what we read before she hangs the ornament that goes with that day's reading. It's a great way for us to teach her biblical heritage that leads up to Jesus. It's also a frugal way to avoid the big tree. All's you need is a tree limb and some paper really.

With the current financial crunch some families are feeling this year I'm sure that an expensive real tree is going to be a budget buster. There is nothing wrong with going this route instead. The point of Christmas is not the big fancy tree with high electric bill to go with it. Christmas can still be celebrated with traditions that go back farther then the "traditional" Christmas tree.

I'm glad you liked my daughter's ornaments. She worked really hard on them and is proud to put them on the tree ever night. She really does look forward to it. Do you have a tradition tree? If not what do you do instead? Have you ever used a Jesse tree?

I've enjoyed our visit this evening. I just hope I didn't keep you up to late!

It's official, I guess.... kinda. The National Bureau of Economic Research says that we've been in a recession all year. Finally, someone backs up our alarmist news media. Now would you people finally panic so we can get some really juicy news bites!?

Did you panic when you heard this news? Wall Street did. Then again, the Dow plunges 100 point whenever someone on the trading floor rips a loud fart. No, don't be fooled by their name - there is nothing official about the NBER. No magic powers. Nope. Just a bunch of guys.

In fact, a recession, by definition, still cannot be declared.

Why I'm smarter than this group of award-winning economists after the jump.


Maybe they fell asleep during Econ 101, or maybe they think that they get to write their own definition for the word. They can call it a downturn. A slowdown. Markers for a possible recession. But a recession it is not.

A recession, as defined in economic terms, is:

a period of two quarters of negative GDP growth.

"a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP growth, real personal income, employment (non-farm payrolls), industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."

As we count down the days to Christmas let's not lose count of our budget. May the only red we see be joyful and not on our bank statements.

The Not the Jet Set family would like to give you a special gift this year. One of creativity, thriftiness and green. We will be starting our Thrifty Christmas series starting today and will go through the season. During the coming weeks we invite you to follow along with our family and see the way we celebrate Christ's birth while being good Stewards.

Come on in and take off your boots. Have a seat and get comfy while I get you a cup of hot chocolate to warm you up. It's cold outside today isn't it? While you sip your hot chocolate and get warmed up let's talk about our first Thrifty Christmas idea.


Homemade Advent Wreath

For to many years I tried to buy an Advent Wreath after Advent had started hoping for a good deal. Every year I found the same thing. They had sold out of the wreathes before the season even started. After my daughter gave me a wonderful gift last year the search is over! Her teacher helped them make the advent wreathes using their hand prints and construction paper. Then she cut sticky backed circle velcro tabs in half for the flames to be added. She also laminated them so that they will last longer. I love it and we will continue to use it every year. If you are going to make one for your family trying adding everyone's hand print to make it a true family project.

This project will help save you some green while staying focused on the true meaning of Christmas. It saved our family around $40 and gave this mom an extra warm fuzzy feeling.

What does your family use for an Advent wreath?

Well, it was nice chatting! You should come back soon and we can talk about some of our other Thrifty Christmas ideas while you enjoy some more hot chocolate. I was wanting to talk to you about our Christmas tree and show you some of the wrapped presents.

Honestly, the month of November was a blur! It has not been the easiest month personally because my grandfather has cancer and any day will be his last. I've been making lots of trips back and forth to "home" with the baby in tow. It's a three hour drive each way but worth every minute of it to see my grandfather and be there for my mom and grandma as they live through this experience on a daily basis taking care of him in his own house.

On to the budget... November's funds were kind of crazy. We started out by blowing through all but a couple hundred in the first week and half! But then we had almost one hundred left at the end of the month. Weird huh?


November's Budget Recap:

• Food - bulk food and meat for two months bought at the beginning of the month meant we had about $20-$25 to fill in the gaps for the month (ie. milk and yogurt)
  
• Cell Phone Bill- We always have lots of extra minutes at the end of the month, but this month with all the calls to home (and received from home) we blew through the minutes and then some. We were WAY over budget on that bill.
  
• We were under budget on gas because we planned for prices to go up.
• Had to cut Mr's new jeans out of the budget.
  
• Used the date night funds and beer funds as intended. It was a nice treat!
  

• Add line item for daughter's commissions (aka, chore money)
  
• Added extra for the gifts for the 5 family member's with birthday's this month
  
• Adding some extra towards Christmas gifts
• Surprise Doctor Bill- Why a surprise? Because we maxed out our out of pocket expense portion back in March. One of the three doctors our baby saw last month at the special clinic doesn't take our insurance so it was considered out-of-network. We were not expecting this since all the other doctors were covered by insurance. That ate up just shy of $100 of this month's funds.

• Fully fund retirement- partially funded via work 401k, not adding to Roth until after the new roof funds are fully saved
• Fund college savings again. - adding this month
• Save for new roof- continuing and should be have enough funds by spring

Do you ever play the what if game? Sometimes there will be an event that triggers those what if thoughts for me. Last week my mom told me that a guy from the small town I grew up in won $250k from a lotto ticket. Right away I had thoughts of what he would do with it. Things that would waste the money and be bad for one's health. All things that made me cringe.

So then I thought what would I do if it was me. Of course I don't play the lotto or gamble in any form so I would never actually have that kind of a windfall. But it is fun to pretend!


$100k to taxes (this is just a rough guess as to what the taxes would actually be)
$25k tithe (10% off the top for our tithe, God ALWAYS comes first)
$20k metal roof (our roof is 30+ years old and is starting to leak)
$5k house repairs (our old house has lots of little repairs that are needed)
$95k pay off house (nothing like the security of a paid off house in a bad economy)
$5k car fund (both are vehicles have over 83k miles and we need to start saving for new ones)

WOW!!!! That money went fast. I can see why so many people who win large sums of lotto money file bankruptcy. When you hear quarter million dollars it sounds like a lot. But as you see, it really doesn't go that far once you take out for taxes. In fact, after taxes and tithing half the money was gone. You actually only have $125k to spend. The one nice thing would be the paid off house which would add an additional $875 a month to our budget.

Do you want to play along? Tell us what you would do with the money!

Black Friday has come and gone. Cyber Monday is upon us. The shopping frenzy continues. At Thanksgiving, my aunt was talking about catching a couple of hours of sleep and then packing up at midnight to head to the mall. A little crazy? Sure. But it's all in good fun.

The real question is: