Thursday, October 9, 2008

Consumerism


I decided this past week to spend a month without buying anything except food, including not eating out. This is a huge deal for me. I am hoping that it will help me break the eating out habit, but also just the terrible habit of accumulating more stuff. But what happens when we have to go to a kid's birthday party or give other gifts?

Luckily, the mother is one of my very great friends and she is completely supporting me in this. She offered several ideas from how the boys could decide to give one of their toys, to seeds for the garden next year, however we decided (in other words - I decided and told the kids what we were going to do) was to make a Duct Tape Wallet.



I remembered seeing something on Martha Stewart when the TV was on in the background a while back, so I did a quick Internet search and found several sites with directions. This was way too complicated for a 4 year old and my 6 year old didn't want to sit inside and help - it was just too gorgeous outside. And the directions were horrible or I was just having a brain dead afternoon! After struggling for a while I remembered Martha and tried her site, but those directions were even worse. Once you kinda know what you're doing it's not so bad...but that first one...

The funniest part of the afternoon, was when Ryan Duct Tapped Max to the floor, although he did get it in Max's hair...I need to get better at taking pictures!



So, ours aren't as colorful as Martha's, but hey, we get the normal Duct Tape around here!

Does anyone else have ideas to make for gifts? Christmas is right around the corner...

2 comments:

Darrin F. said...

You need to put up a picture of your duct tape lunch bag. Sure your kid might get beat up at school for carrying it, but 30 years from now he'll get up from that therapist couch and go, "Wow...that was a pretty cool lunchbag." :)

Sandra said...

With a few decades of homemade gift exchanges in my family, I got lots of ideas...

Make a naturally gorgeous candle holder by drilling 1inch holes into a wooden log you find on a walk or hike, or from a pruned or broken tree branch...