Well, our more frugal lifestyle is suiting us just fine. I'm cooking more from scratch again, and I had forgotten how much I actually enjoy cooking and baking. Of course, time is still an issue for us, but I may make some changes in that department too! Stay tuned for that!
Anyway, I'm very pleased with myself this Christmas! My daughter was married in September (beautiful bride, beautiful wedding!). We had decided to go with silk flowers mainly because she had a particular color scheme in mind and also because of the expense of live flowers, not to mention the "green" aspect of it all. (Yes, she's her mother's daughter!) The floral arrangements were gorgeous and we had originally planned sell the glass vases, clear marbles and floral arrangements on craigslist for someone else to get a bargain if they wanted to. Then my husband said he'd like to put the flowers on some of the gravesites of his family. The immediate family are pretty well tended to by his mom and aunt, but others not so much. Being a good ol' Richmond boy, he has dozens of relatives born, raised and buried nearby, hence a lot of grave sites that have long since been neglected.
He and my son took a couple of the arrangements out to some "great" relatives and he said it felt really nice to recycle them in that way.
Then I read a great article at Associated Content by another writer on how to use those glass vases that tend to sit in the closet . . . Since we had ten, I definitely benefitted from her article. Here's the link if you want to read the article: Ideas for Christmas Centerpieces Using Your Glass Vase. I recycled some of the glass vases by filling them with Christmas ornaments that I didn't use this year on the tree. (They can be purchased at the Dollar Store as well.)
Finally, we had bows made to put on the chairs along the aisle at the wedding. I reused some of them on the Christmas tree and took some apart to use as ribbon on the tree.
All in all, we're quite pleased to be able to get double mileage out of these items that cost quite a bit originally, but will now be used over and over. Each time we reuse them, we'll have happy memories of the wedding as a bonus!
I think I'm actually getting in the Christmas spirit now! Tonight and tomorrow night our church is performing an outdoor Living Nativity. It's really nice, with scenes across about 2 acres. It's a drive through, free with donatations accepted. We always give the proceeds to a couple of different charities. It's bitterly cold tonight, but unless we get snow, it will go on! In fact, I'll be leaving in about 15 minutes to go over for set up help and get ready to help the participants dress in costume.
Think about us tonight while you're snuggled up by the fire!
Monday, January 14, 2008
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