As I mentioned in a previous entry in my other blog, Ccol4him's Claymania; Jordan Thomas is a young man from Chattanooga who lost his legs in a boating accident and began forming the Jordan Thomas Foundation in his hospital bed. The foundation helps children who need prostheses and aren't able to afford them and the therapy that they need. If you visit the foundation site, you can find out about 3 of the children that the foundation has helped. One was featured on the CNN special on Thanksgiving Night.
Whatever holidays you celebrate-whether it be Christmas or Hanukkah, Thanksgiving or whatever-these steps should help reduce the stress and cost of these events; 1. Agree ahead of time with family to limit your spending.
For example, the adults in my family have talked about not spending a lot on each other; but to focus on giving good things for the kids.
2. Budget your/your family's time/schedule
Don't overschedule your holidays, or you'll be too tired to enjoy them. For example; instead of going to a lot
of parties during Christmmas, just pick one or two.
3. Donate seldom-used clothes, toys, etcetera to Goodwill, Salvation Army, and etcetera
Get the kids involved. Tell them that others need it or that they need to make room for Christmas gifts.
4. Check out About.com's ideas for a frugal holiday season
5. If you cook well, take great photographs, do any crafts, or sew; consider making part or all of your gifts Family Fun has great ideas for having "A Homemade Christmas."
6. Focus less on gifts and more on being together
7. Buy small stocking stuffer items at Dollar General, Dollar Tree, or drug stores for extra gifts-because there's always at least one extra person that might accidentally get left out of your list.
8. Plan at least 1/2 to a full day of volunteering for a charity around the holiday season.
Whether it be visiting the nursing home, helping feed the homeless or an event such as Wrapping For Inclusion ; be sure to do something to improve your community. Serving the less fortunate than ourselves makes our problems seem trivial. If you can, involve your whole family in the project.
9.. Speaking of Donating, there are dozens of Click to Give or Search to Givewebsites-where you can donate to a cause without using money. Here are a few of these sites;
Here's a new easy way to raise money for your favorite cause. Just start using Yahoo! powered GoodSearch.com as your search engine and they'll donate about a penny to your favorite cause every time you do a search!
In addition, do all of your shopping through their online shopping mall, GoodShop.com, where you can shop at more than 900 top online retailers and a percentage of your purchases will go to the charity or school of your choice. You pay the same price as you normally would, but a donation goes to your cause!
Here's the web site — http://www.goodsearch.com. You can also read about GoodSearch in the NY Times, Oprah Magazine, CNN, ABC News and the Wall Street Journal.
Play a vocabu8lary game and a sponsor will give away Free Rice
10. Relax and enjoy the holiday For example; if you celebrate Christmas, take a moment to look at your Christmas tree and reflect on the deeper meaning of the holiday.
If comedian, actor and game show host Drew Carey gets 1 million followers on his Twitter account by December 31, 2009; he'll donate 1 million dollars to Lance Armstong's charity Livestrong . To read more about this; please check out the blog link onCBS.
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