Monday, December 29, 2014
You gotta love this time of year – before the Christmas spirit really has a chance to disappear, it’s already time for the next big event – New Year’s Eve! New Year’s Eve is particularly fun as it’s a time to both reflect on the past and look ahead eagerly to the future. Somehow even the young are caught up in sentiment during this time. Just check your Facebook feed and you can see everybody’s year in review.
Naturally, there’s also a big debate about g0ing out or staying in for New Year’s Eve. We’ve already made that choice early this year, and plan to have some people over to our home. We will have a mash-up of ages and interests, as well as a tight budget (hello Christmas spending hang-over!), so I needed party ideas that would work with these factors.
Thankfully, the general jubilance of the season is pretty much all that’s needed for these fun and frugal New Year’s Eve parties — as they cost almost nothing to host:
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Posted by Ayse Gider at 08:04 AM
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Can you believe Christmas is literally around the corner? As in next week? While I may have the perfect gifts picked out this year, I still feel somewhat disconnected from the holiday season. My plan for the next week is to make some rich cocoa, blast only Christmas tunes and watch all of the Christmas movies. Oh, and I’m learning about how other countries celebrate Christmas as well. The traditions vary greatly, but these destinations are all incredible places to celebrate Christmas:
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Posted by Ayse Gider at 07:44 AM
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
So, I’m kinda jumping the gun here and calling it early since the actual results won’t be in until long after the tree is down and the celebrating is over. Still, I’ve been keeping an eye on all presents great and small with all the digging and researching for Christmas gifts I’ve done this year. Plus, after Thanksgiving Google released it’s search results which are pretty darn good indicator for what people are looking for under their tree this year.
Here’s what it looks like: the top 10 Christmas gifts for 2014:
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Posted by Ayse Gider at 10:53 AM
Saturday, December 6, 2014
You know how it goes: just when I thought I was ahead of all my Christmas shopping, I get sidetracked and wind up behind. Granted, there are still a few weeks until Christmas so my family will get covered, but what about gifts for teachers? Usually, I like to make Christmas teacher gifts, but that is not happening this year. I love the under $10 gifts from last week’s post, but I don’t know that I want to use any of those as teacher gifts. (And do I even need to mention that the teacher gifts need to be in my budget?)
Naturally, I’ve done some thinking and planning and researching over the past couple of days, and here’s what I’ve discovered about terrific teacher gifts:
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Posted by Ayse Gider at 03:16 PM
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
**Updated 12/14/16***
Well, here we are once again post-Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Dare I admit that this year a few more personal gifts were purchased than usual? In fact, my Christmas list was barely touched. Ouch! So, my budget is already out of whack and I’m not even close to being done yet. Just like last year, I need good gifts that don’t cost a fortune and aren’t just junk. I don’t want disappointed recipients but I can’t spend much more than $10 for a lot of these. Though it sounds tough, it can be done. Hey – we did it last year after all.
So here (once again) are 10 great Christmas gifts for under $10:
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Posted by Ayse Gider at 11:03 AM