I have had to learn to be more resourceful, more crafty. A loss of that kind of income will do it. I recognize it was my own free will that caused that loss and NO WAY would I ever change that. This has been the best thing that has ever happened to me (not including people I love). Sure, I still have stress ~ how will we pay for this, what do we need to downsize, etc. ~ but the blessings have been worth it. So when it seemed I needed to come up with a Christmas gift for the hubs, I went straight to Pinterest. I remembered seeing something there about 12 dates and unique ways to have "date night" with your spouse. While it cost me probably almost as much as a regular, boring Christmas gift from Best Buy, or Newegg, or someplace like that - you know, one that the hubs would actually want. But making this gift, while stressful because I didn't allow myself enough time to do it without stress, was more fun to get and will be more fun throughout the year for me than whatever game or gadget or technological item would have been.
So, the hubs got the gift of 12 dates. There were 12 large envelopes, with the month written on the outside. On the first of each month, he will open the envelope, read about the date, then select a day for the date. Some of them are stay-at-home dates, some are local Cali dates, and some take us to JC or beyond. It was fun to come up with 12 different dates, some are things I have not done in a while, some are things I have never done, so it will be good to step outside the comfort zone and make a fool of myself. And when the year is over, I'll have a new basket to put stuff in. WIN-WIN!!
I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and may you have a blessed 2013.
I love Christmas. The season, the reason, the decorations, the lights, the trees, the expectation. Everything. One of my favorite decorations is the nativity set someone bought for me 18 years ago. It is breakable, and somehow has managed to mostly survive all four of my kids. Only the donkey is missing an ear and the shepherd's staff is broken at the top. Otherwise, they are still intact. I have always wanted my kids to play with them, so they can reenact the Nativity story, but I would always watch out for them. This year I finally figured it out, with some help from Pinterest. I can let them reenact the story and ensure my breakables don't get broken.
Here is the Nativity set I made just for them. It is durable and super cute (in my opinion), using fun little pictures of the scene. I just bought some cute Nativity stickers, had the hubs cut up some blocks for me, painted the blocks, then mod podged the stickers.
Here is the final product. Oh, if I could have figured this out earlier and saved the donkey an ear...
Okay, so I am no Norman Rockwell, or Van Gogh, or any other classic artist. But I really like these blocks!
