It is beginning to look a lot like a “hand-made” Christmas.
The kids and I are gong to be making and giving as many hand made gifts as possible this year. The glitz and glam of Christmas, not to mention this whole toy thing with China is a bit sickening. The goal is to make Christmas special and instill that since of “wonder” without it being about the gifts. Tricky I know but I am going to give it my best shot.
I have found some cute and inexpensive things online to make and give to neighbors and will be using ETSY as a resource for anything I don’t want to do myself. If you haven’t been to this site, you should go right now and look around. It is like eBay but with all independent business owners from all over who sell handmade items.
When Mike and I first got married we decided we wanted to make sure we purchased hand made art in every country we visited. It was a simple way of blessing some-one’s craft and supporting independent business owners in poor places. Over the years, that has grown to simple things like buying items form those we know who are just starting a business or are in business for themselves. When we get bagels on the weekends we go to the local Mom and Pop shop instead of Einstein Brothers. For us, it is a symbolic way of sowing our resources in a life giving way into people instead of machines. We can’t do it all the time. Home Depot and Wal-Mart are unfortunate evils but at least we try.
I am not sure how to make things for the boys though. Our oldest wants a Transformer or a Bionicle. He doesn’t watch commercials or movies with these things on them but somehow he knows they are the “it” thing this year. Isn’t it strange? Does anyone have any thoughts on a hand made Christmas gift for a 6 yr old boy?
