It's been quite a while since I've last written and I apologize, but life has been hectic. A week ago yesterday we had our church bazaar. I was in charge of the vendors and the publicity not to mention baking dozens of cookies. I told my husband when I arrived home last Saturday night that I felt like I had my life back. Our ladies guild realized $2800 after all was said and done, so that's not too bad. The money will be dispersed first to pay for things like funeral dinners and supplies for that and fellowship on Sunday (coffee, tea, and cups, napkins, creamer, sugar), then in January there will be a meeting and different charities will be gifted the remainder. This is not the only fundraiser for ladies guild, so they will have a little bit of money to give out. Not too bad for a congregation that has about 80 in attendance on a good Sunday. We had vendors who sold different things and the only requirement was it had to be homemade, not commercial stuff. I think everyone was pleased with their results.
Before that was Thanksgiving which we hosted for some of our family. Last year we did two whole turkeys and this year we decided it was more economical to fix turkey breasts -- less waste and no one seemed to really want a turkey leg or wing. We also figured out dishes that we could make that were economical and we knew would be eaten.
Before Thanksgiving our knitting/crochet group at church chose places to take hats, scarves, and blankets that we had made. We had over 1000 hats to give out! We gifted hats and scarves to our church's preschool children and then two teachers in the congregation to give their classes. We took hats and blankets to a cancer care facility. We also gave hats to an orphanage/foster care facility, an inner city school, and then our local Lutheran school. We had dish cloths, potholders, and scrubbies made and we made up a packet of these to gift to our preschool parents. A local women's shelter will be given some of the dishcloths, scrubbies, and potholders as well, along with staples for their kitchen. My husband and I delivered the bulk of these items before Thanksgiving and it came at a good time because the weather started to turn very cold.
Most of our Christmas shopping was done a few months ago. I would keep an eye out for sales on stuff. There are a few people we shop online for and again, watched for specials and free postage. The price of postage has really increased. My husband lasered small cutting boards and to mail one was $9.30. So, we discovered it might be far more reasonable to just order things from companies and snag the free postage besides the discount for people who live far from us. Most of the things we ordered to be shipped were food related. We figured these treats would be well received because we all have to eat, right?
Over the summer I did make some jams, jellies, and pickles, and for my husband's three kids, each family will be given some of the things I canned. We bought a few small items so everyone has something to open on Christmas, but the bulk of their gifts were either money or a gift card to each family from a meat packing plant that has amazing cuts of meats. So, no outstanding bills for Christmas gifts. Everything has been either budgeted for or paid for.
My husband's late wife had a Silhouette machine which is like a Cricut. He encouraged me to learn how to use it since I like to make things. I made the bulk of our Christmas cards and Thanksgiving cards. I crocheted little star bookmarks for the ladies in my Bible class for Christmas. I normally buy Christmas cards at thrift stores throughout the year so I can't say I saved money making my own, but it was fun and I've learned a lot. DH says if I enjoyed it, it was worth the cost of the paper and a new blade for the machine. Fortunately we had plenty of envelopes so no cost there. I also made gift tags for the family for their small token gifts. Maybe I'll eventually feel more comfortable making these items, but it is fun, nonetheless.
It's been bad weather the last few days here in Central Illinois. We had snow on Thursday and temperature started dropping. We received more snow yesterday and it became colder and this morning it was really cold with wind chills in negative numbers. We shoveled part of the driveway yesterday and by the afternoon you couldn't tell we had. We did the same today and at least it is sunny and not snowing, but oh, how blessed I feel even when I got really cold, knowing the pioneers didn't have the warm clothes, scarf, hat, and gloves I have and then a warm house to return to and electricity to make hot chocolate! I'm looking forward to a relaxing afternoon reading since most of my crafting/baking is about finished...just will need to clean up after our Sunday dinner. On to enjoy the holidays!
December 14th, 2025 at 06:46 pm 1765737974
December 14th, 2025 at 10:04 pm 1765749871
December 16th, 2025 at 03:56 am 1765857408