The Personal Touch

What kind of holiday shopper are you?  Do you shop ahead, finding bargains or “perfect gifts” throughout the year?  Or, do you wait until the twelfth hour, joining the pressing crowds, revelling in last minute deals or the challenges of competitive shopping.  I used to be a member of the latter camp but found, after stressing our December finances beyond tolerance, that the former method was more easily managed…both by our budget and my nerves.  As years went by, I also realized that some gift-giving options wouldn’t have been available when shopping last minute.  By shopping ahead, I could make points redemption from certain online merchants to ensure gifts, shipped directly to recipients, arrived in time and wrapped.  In leaner years, to spare our budget, early preparation enabled us to gift in more creative ways, yet still impart our love and care.

Gifts from the kitchen proved popular.  Soup mixes – varying mixtures of beans, grains and spice blends with ingredient list and instruction labels – are a great way to bring warmth to someone’s winter day.  You’ll save even more money on each jar if you’ve been bulking up.  Hot-buttered rum mix is another popular gift from the kitchen though, requiring refrigeration, it either needs specialized shipping or personal delivery.  Hot drink mixes hold up better if your shipping gifts.  A batch of home-made noodles, dried and packaged in an air-tight container, makes a fabulous gift for the pasta (and soup) lovers on your list.  This might not ship well, either, as the home-made noodles tend to break easier than store-bought varieties.  Some home-made truffles ship well and are delicious at any time of year.  Candies and brittles are another sweet yet thrifty treat most people enjoy.  In years past, I’ve also prepared traditional holiday foods – old-world recipes mostly producing copious quantities – and distributed these familiar treats to family members who also love those recipes but don’t make them because of the volume results. It was a great way of sharing traditional meals when we couldn’t actually get together.

PJ's for the Grandkids

Well-crafted, home-made items are not only a thoughtful way of gifting, you can  make for high-quality items for much less cost, particularly if you buy on sale or from “remnant” bunks.  When I was a child, my mother made new pajamas  for my sister and I, each Christmas -- that “soft gift” under the tree always confirmed the eagerly anticipated plush flannel nighties.  A few years ago, I did the same thing for my grand-children and those gifts were apparently worn thin, too.  Home-made personal products (creams, body scrubs, lip balms, etc.,) make nice gifts, particularly if prettily packaged.  It’s a good idea to include an ingredient label for recipients so allergic reactions can be avoided. Home decor objects like curtains, pillow covers, calendar hangers, or a set of matching napkins and placemats are quick and easy projects with a sewing machine, some rudimentary skill, and careful fabric choices.  The sense of smell is most commonly linked to memory, so to be long-remembered, craft some closet or drawer freshener sachets.  It can be hard to find something unique and special for unique gifts for the elderly or infirm.  Sometimes being of service means the most to them; they may need something heavy moved or a difficult household chore done.  Or, plan a special meal  as treat for a shut-in.

Don’t forget cards and packaging.  If gifting  cash or retail gift cards a home-made card with heartfelt sentiment can personalize the gift and reduce shipping costs to a minimum.  Attractive packaging and containers add a long-lasting element to gifts of all sorts. You can embellish common containers for reinforcement or to provide a dark environment for light-sensitive foods or creams.

Whether or not the budget is tight, or time is a crunch, there’s distinct joy in cooking, baking or crafting gifts; a greater sense of connection to the people for whom I’m tailoring the gift.  It needn’t be costly to share one’s love:  a box of goodies from the kitchen, a simple pomander tied with ribbon, or some time spent cleaning Great-grandmother’s ceiling fan.  Personalized care is always gladly received.

Optimize Your Seasonal Spending

All it takes is a look at the news to know this holiday season will be a struggle for many.  If you’re budget is feeling the pinch, save yourself time, money, and (possible) disappointment, with focused preparation before heading out to shop. 

First, establish your spending limit and then break that total down, budgeting for each purchase.  Next, prepare lists:  a list of those for whom you are shopping; a list of stores you plan to visit; and a list of items needed for home decoration and entertainment.  On your gift-recipient list allow room to record pertinent sizes, preferred colours, favourite games, authors, past-times, or other personal details you’ll need while shopping.  On the list of stores, leave room to record any items of interest you find, noting prices, warranties and special offers.  Then shop around.  Details you record will aide comparison before making the actual purchases, ensuring you get the best deals.

Also before buying, ask each merchant about their policies on returns, refunds and exchanges.  Quite often, sale items cannot be refunded or returned.  Exchanges are generally allowed but, when it’s a popular sale item, odds of the preferred colour or size being available diminishes quickly with each passing day.  Another option to consider, particularly when shipping packages, is a gift receipt.  These generally exclude price but contain all other the pertinent  information for the recipient to affect an exchange or return in their own hometown, saving both of you time and more shipping charges if amendments are required.

Pay attention to packaging, too.  Some retailers will only make refunds, returns, or exchanges on items in their original package.  Occasionally, merchandise is so securely enclosed they don’t allow for in-store inspection. Even if the merchant provides a display model, you can’t be certain of the sealed-product’s functioning and wholeness.  To avoid holiday let-down, it’s best to open and fully inspect the item when you get home and prior to repackaging, wrapping and/or shipping.

In this tough economy, it pays to make the most of your time and money.  By preparing, you’ll save both and keep frustration to a minimum, and that’s a good start to imbuing any holiday season with peace and joy.

Holiday Spirits

If I told you I’m thinking about holiday liqueurs, you might conclude fall has been gruelling.  It has been, actually, but that’s beside the point.  The real reason I’m considering holiday liqueurs is because I plan on making them, and most require 4-6 weeks to develop.  If I start the six-week liqueurs now, they’ll be ready to bottle the week prior to Christmas.  By then, we’ll probably need a tipple or two.

This is one crazy-hectic season!  So, why am I making liqueurs?  Really, they don’t take much time – only a half an hour (or less) to mix the ingredients and store the mixture.  Some require occasional turning or shaking, but most just sit in a cool, dark place, quietly maturing.  Though time isn’t our deciding factor, I definitely appreciate the ease of preparing this holiday treat.

For us, budget dictates this type of spending.  We don’t drink much alcohol, and don’t stock a bar.  However, come the holidays, we like to offer a range of beverages, both alcoholic and non-, and liqueurs can be one of the most expensive ingredients.  They are also one of the most versatile, adding pizzazz to cocktails, but they’re also good served alone, on the rocks, mixed with sodas, creams, milk or in drinks like coffee or hot chocolate.

Each recipe I have uses some sort of spirit:  whisky, vodka, gin or brandy.  While there’s still a significant cost involved, the results are thriftier than buying similar name-brand liqueurs.  Flavour can be compromised by using poor quality ingredients, but even when using finer spirits and whole ingredients like vanilla bean, the liqueurs ultimately cost less than an equivalent quantity of name-brands.   With one 750-ml bottle of whiskey, the recipe I use produces more than 1500 ml of coffee liqueur.  Over time, I’ve adjusted the recipes to suit our tastes; it’s as easy as adding a little more or less water and/or sugar.

 
If your budget is groaning at the mere thought of the holiday season, but you’d still like to offer your guests some holiday “cheer,” consider making your own liqueurs.  Here’s a few recipes from my repetoire:

1. Coffee liqueur with vanilla bean (sits for 4 weeks)
2. Coffee liqueur with vanilla extract (sits for 6 weeks)
3. Cherry Bounce (“bounced” every day for 3 months – sorry, too late for this holiday season)
4. Orange Liqueur (shaken once a day for 1^st week, then once a week for 3 more weeks.)
5. Plum (Christmas) Liqueur (turned everyday; ready when clear – approx. 4-6 weeks)
6. Irish Cream (keep refrigerated; will not keep long; make ahead to allow bubbles to settle.)

If these recipes interest you, post a comment sharing ways you plan to save money this holiday season, and then send me an email (GALaursen@gmail.com) with “Holiday Spirits” in the subject line and noting your choice of recipe(s) in the body of the email.  I’ll include your recipes in the body of my reply.

Sköl!

Take Time to Smell the Roasters

I love, love, love this time of year!  It’s such a relief when the scorching heat of summer subsides and the crisp cool of autumn arrives.  Wardrobe options now include sweaters and slacks.  Sleep is more comfortable under a cozy blanket.  And, cooking and baking indoors are tolerable again.  No more back and forth to the barbeque.  No more getting up before the crack of dawn to boil pasta for a salad.  Once again, we can have the roasted and slow-braised meats we love.  At long last, we can enjoy our favourite baked treats again.

Tonight's roast turkey...YUM!

Roast meats are one of my choicest time-, calorie-, and budget-savers.  First of all, roasting is generally done with less fat and larger cuts of meat.  That makes it kinder to both health and wallet.  Best of all, roasted meats can often be stretched to provide a few meals.  Cost per serving/meal becomes very economical   and, though initial cooking times may be a little longer than preparing individually-portioned meats, subsequent dinners made from those pre-cooked proteins come together very quickly.  Stir-fries, cream- or tomato-based pastas, salads, soups, casseroles, pizzas – all are easily prepared in the time it takes to chop a few vegetables and prep the carbs.  Not just sit-down dinners, either.  Leftover roast beef, ham, chicken, turkey, and pork make flavour-packed sandwiches and wraps.  Add a condiment which compliments those meats – like horseradish sauce, honey-mustard glaze, stuffing, cranberry or apple sauce – and you can elevate those sandwiches to epicurean heights of deliciousness.  There’s nothing new in this idea.  When I grew up, Sunday dinner wasn’t just a good, hot, family meal; it furnished amazing and unique lunches through the coming week.

The benefits of home-baking are more modest.  There are budgetary advantages, certainly, but the savings margin is narrower than other forms of culinary wizardry.  The real saving is dietary.  Baking allows you to create desserts with lower calorie profiles and few (if any) artificial ingredients, preservatives, or stabilizers.  By choosing whole foods (e.g. grains, nuts, and spices) and complimenting them with healthier fats and sweeteners, these treats can become truly wholesome snacks.  And, while your kitchen is issuing forth delectable fragrances of your baking, the oven’s warmth helps reduce your heating bill.

If you’re having difficulty “feeling the love” of this season, try creating some of your own culinary comfort foods.  The smells seduce.  The oven heats things up.  And the food is oh so satisfying.  Your finances will value the budget-friendly large-cut proteins.  Your schedule will appreciate the time-savings.  And, both heart and waistline will take pleasure in healthier goodies.  So turn on the oven and share my seasonal delight. 

Tricked Out for Halloween

It’s been many years since I’ve had young children at home but I can still recall their eager anticipation of Halloween.  Occasionally, they wanted to dress up as popular characters, but often their tastes were more generic:  a princess, a firefighter, a mouse, and even a vampire bat.  So we rarely shopped for costumes off the rack – my kids imagined characters unrepresented in most stores.  Instead, we made a project creating costumes during the weeks prior.

I took a page from my own childhood, when even the simplest garment or accessory could transform my little self into a witch, an aviator, a Flapper, a Martian, or a favoured movie star.  In watching my own children play, I realized their imaginations were no different.  Once the kids decided on a character, we would visit the local thrift shop for garments and accessories.  For my son’s vampire bat, we couldn’t find any clothing suitable so I checked the remnant bunk at a fabric shop and found some fake-fur material that worked perfectly.  Equipped with the kids’ coloured artwork and effusive descriptions, I stitched, pinned, and even taped things to meet “design specifications.”  The kids delighted in directing Mom – cooperating whenever possible – until their ideas took shape.

Neither of my kids liked wearing masks, complaining it was hard to see and breathe while wearing them.  When I was young, we had neighbours who made their own elaborate masks with papier-mâché and I wanted to try making them for my children, however, as they didn’t like masks, I used costume make-up instead.  Face paint also works well but it was hard to find then.  The difficulty with make-up is getting excited children to remain motionless long enough to apply it!  If your children (or grandchildren) are interesting in making their own masks, here are two sites I found:  the first is a mask formed to the face; and the second uses a plastic milk jug as the form.  Papier-mâché can also make interesting costume pieces.  At a youth party I once attended, twins showed up in moulded cubes, as “a pair of dice.”

It may sound like a lot of time and work but it’s not, really.  Ideally, the kids do most of the creating, and then the choosing of appropriate garments, accessories, and any unusual items that can help them convert ideas into costume.  The more my kids did themselves, the more pride they took in the results.  My guidance was minimal – kids have such fantastic imaginations – so mostly I helped with tailoring and adjustments.  The memories we made were well worth the minimal time and energy required.

As young parents, though, we had other concerns.  At that time, we were struggling to make ends meet, so we needed a less expensive option than ready-made costumes.  Thrift shops, along with the children’s creativity and a few simple items, helped them create fully-fledged characters for about half the price.  Another concern for us, given we lived in northern BC where it gets very chilly by the end of October, was keeping the kids warm.  Ready-made costumes don’t always fit over clothing but in second-hand (sanitized) garments, our children were always toasty.

By far, the best treat for us adults was when neighbours’ asked the kids who/what they were.  The explanations, as elaborate as their creative processes, were hilarious.