I wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards
around the holidays, you need to be careful that the cards will be
honored after the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after
Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though
the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them
from doing this. On the contrary, it is referred to as 'Bankrupcy
Planning). Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be
cautious about.
Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine's to close 150 stores nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owned by Talbots)
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores mo re to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores - GOOD Riddance!
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stores
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Loews to close down some stores
Dillard's to close some stores
Using the "Bailout Option" for Christmas this year.
Giving the kids CASH. and very little at that!
Humbug
I will be making all present's I give out of semi-rotted bull pine.
I thought it had been cancelled this year.
No - actually I don't do it but for the rest, you are not allowed to spend any money this year....just pull it out of the bank and sit on it then hope for a bail out.
We're having a very slim Christmas this year... girls and I bought DH a new pair of leather work gloves. I am making each of the big girls a sewing box, pin cushion, and button jar of her own, and if I get around to it, I'm going to crochet them all winter hats. Everyone else has to split up the homemade fudge and peanut brittle, which I plan to scale back on as well.
I announced to all of my children back in August that we are going to have a mandatory home made gift holiday...no exceptions. Coupons for work count big time. Bake goods score extra points, and so on.
My way of looking at it is what money they spend on my gifts or each other's gifts comes directly out of their living expenses. By the time February rolls around, they all come up short and have to humbly ask for help with their finances, and I wind up paying for it all. Not this year!
I've been working on my gifts for about a month now. They are all getting something I made.
My challenge seems to be working so far, but we'll see when it comes down to the great, unwrapping ceremony.
Christina
homey, slim is in this year but for you...slim this year fat ones coming up in the ensuing years.
Spending money only benefits big business who have commercialized the holiday. It has nothing to do with the actual holiday purpose.
When my wife and I first married we were broke like most newlyweds and for Christmas presents I used wood I scrounged from constuction site scrap piles and with only hand tools I made her parents wooden magazine racks for each of them. Wooden dowels and tons of sanding and hand rubbed staining to make what I thought were very nice pieces of furniture,......When they move a couple of years later they sold them in a yard sale >:( Even though they said they got quite a bit of $ for them that they needed for their move I have never been able to put as much thought or feeling into the gifts as I used to. For us now it's more the time and the food and the gifts are for the children. [hungry]
http://www.amazon.com/Unplug-Christmas-Machine-Complete-Putting/dp/0688109616
This is a great book.
c.wood,
some people just don't appreciate the effort/love that goes into something like that. a friend of mine who is a very good wood worker owed a favor to his dentist friend so he told him he would make him a bed as a gift. he got some exotic type/expensive wood(like a bird's eye maple or something) w/a beautiful finish that showed off the unusual characteristics of the wood and eventually finished a masterpiece of work. when he showed his friend the friend did not like it and told him to paint it BLACK!!! my friend was heartbroken and painted it black and told me "i coulda used pine or something if he just wanted that".
Quote from: glenn kangiser on November 21, 2008, 12:11:59 PM
Spending money only benefits big business who have commercialized the holiday. It has nothing to do with the actual holiday purpose.
I agree, Glenn. We've always made our gifts for the rest of the family, usually from things we grew. However, we usually do try to buy the girls a few nice things for Christmas. In the past, we've given everyone homemade apple butter from our apple tree, shelled pecans from our pecan trees, pizza crust and bread mixes that we ground the flour for ourselves (and in the case of the cornbread, grew ourselves.) I like the gift giving, but it really doesn't have a lot to do with the real meaning of Christmas, and I think the tendency seems to always be to try to give bigger and better.
Good plan. We haven't done the gift thing for several years now.
We always try to do something memorable for Christmas. Experiences mean more to me than things. But of course, everyone else tries to pull you into the vortex.
I understand exactly what you mean Creative1. My mom makes a big deal out of decorations and lights and so forth, and sometimes it has really bugged me because my kids get kind of confused as to what it is all about. To this day, I associate the smell of floor wax with Christmas, because when I was a kid, we had hardwood floors throughout the house, and my mom's not the best housekeeper, so a few weeks before Christmas, she'd go nuts trying to clean and make everything "perfect" for Christmas. I always got stuck with hand scrubbing and waxing all those floors; it was a "necessity" before we could even put up a tree. Mom also thinks if a few decorations are good, more are better, so she's always buying us big displays with lights and small moving parts that require tabletops, etc., on which to place them... everything from light-up plastic Christmas trees to little train decorations and the ice skater's etc. Even a light-up Christmas Coke truck. Most of them have nothing (or not much) to do with Christmas, and I can't possibly put them all out at once, especially with little kids (this year might be the exception because the baby isn't quite to the getting into everything stage, and the big girls are old enough to know better.) Mom always is offended if I don't have every stinking one out and lit up. She's even gone so far as to go search my basement or attic for missing ones. She showed up last Friday morning while I was in the middle of doing lessons with the kids and wanted us to go to "the North Pole". It is a big expensive Christmas decoration store. Yeah, the kids loved it, and it is kind of magical with all the twinkling lights and stuff, but it seems to miss the entire point. Worse yet, the kids see this stuff and think they need it or want it, when they were perfectly happy before having seen it. I try to teach the kids that it is better to give than to receive and that it is more important to give of yourself than to spend money, that "things" will not satisfy you, and then mom (and sometimes my step-mom, too) comes in and unloads a ton of new stuff we don't need. It's bad enough to be immersed in a very materialistic culture, but when it even comes from friends and family, look out!
I'll probably buy my loved ones socks, gloves and durable clothes :)
My 12 gauge is loaded and If I catch the fatman trying to get down our stove pipe, hes gonna be picken buckshot out of his a$$.
actually I havent had enough time this year, but for next year I'm going to learn how to make toys, most likely wooden. I think it will mean more to my kids down the road if they know I put real thought into what I gave them instead of buying a bunch of plastic junk.
My uncle used to make cranes and loaders - cat etc from steel and gas welding rod etc. They were cool.
Also -- buy your loved ones bullets. It is said here by the Wal-mart Sports guy that Osamabama is going to add a 10 cents per bullet tax. That would be $55.00 tax on $12.97 worth of bullets - 550 .22 bullets per box.
I like to make popcorn balls, put them in plastic wrap and hand them out. The note attach says , "You have been naughty this year, so you get snowman's poop"