WELCOME to our blog! Our family began in August of 2000 when Jody and I were married and has grown into a family of 6! We have 3 beautiful daughters and 1 handsome son! This blog was created in January of 2006 for our family and friends and to serve as a scrapbook for our kiddos in the years to come! Jody is the youth minister at our church and I am a stay at home mom! Here you will find stories and pictures from Living Life Livingston Style...we love to hear your comments too, more motivation for blogging :)

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Handmade vs. Store-bought

Piggy-backing on my Christmas post yesterday...I LOVE handmade gifts!  Knowing that someone took the time to think of me, what I would like and appreciate, spending the money and time purchasing supplies, and the care that went into the gift is so much more fulfilling than any store-bought gift, but then again who doesn't like a giftcard or cash ;)  Funds are always really tight around Christmas for us, it's not that we don't want to spend money on gifts for people, it's usually that we don't have the funds and we HAVE to be creative (which I love anyway :).  I usually start thinking in September about what gifts for what people and try to plan accordingly.  This year our kiddos got ONE big (use that term loosley) gift from us (we don't do Santa) and a stocking (coloring books, crayons, stickers, etc.).  They receive so much for Christmas that they were becoming very "un-grateful", simply not ok with us.  We also decided that although I love getting Christmas cards, we were only going to send them to close family and church staff, nothing against anyone who didn't receive a card, it just wasn't in the budget this year.  We also had to cut back on brother/sister and grandparent gifts for our own family, the funds just weren't there.  But the gifts that we did give were all "handmade" and VERY thought out (I had most of them since the beginning of November) even though some didn't appreciate them as I would have hoped and it REALLY hurt my feelings, it really is the thought that counts, well at least to me it does ;)  So if ever you receive a handmade gift from me/us, it's not at all because I/we didn't want to buy you a nice gift, but simply because we were having to be creative and spent way more time on your gift than purchasing it in a store!  AND we won't be offended if you aren't crafty and decided to purchase a gift (not saying that we deserve gifts either)!

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