~ a merry little Christmas ~ with a few favorite things or not ~

12.12.2008 by savvysuzy

Thanks to janed42

Gift or not to gift? That is the question. We chose not to do the heavy gifting a number of years back. It grew out of being discontented with the whole obligatory gifting process and our finances. My husband and I just got tired of anticipating what the other wanted. Then getting it wrong a number of times.

The same with the kids — we’d buy them things we thought they thought they wanted, but afterwards we’d end up carting many things back to the store to exchange. Many times they would prefer to play with the boxes. So once they got to preteen we started giving them a little money and a few little things.

Then we had an aha! moment and came up with the one gift that the whole family needed idea. We figured out what we needed during the year and then we’d purchase it around that time. It has been something like a DVR or DVD player that we all can appreciate.

You can call us Scrooges if you want to, but this has really freed us up to be able to give or do something because we really want to do it. No obligation here! Plus it allows us to look at the real meaning of Christmas — the day chosen as Jesus’s birthday.

Thanks to Balakov

But back to those toys… Two of my sons’ favorite toys were video games and their all time favorite low tech toy and mine were Legos. I didn’t have them when I was a kid. They are one of the great all time learning tools. We would play with them for hours. It works the mind and the hands. I would advise all parents to get this toy, and it’s not even an affiliate of mine (I don’t think they even have affiliations) — that’s how much I like them.

Now when I was a kid — one of my all time favorite toys were paper dolls. It was fun cutting them out and playing with the wardrobe. I’d play with them for hours. The brown paper bags that they would come in would have a wonderful smell too! The paper had kind of a sheen on it. To this day — I still have a passion for paper. Magazines, scrapbook journaling (although it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the choices), mini books, pop-up books and various other things made out of paper.

What’s your favorite toy?