Holday Challenge: A Parsimonious Christmas

This Christmas, I have decided to see just how frugal I can possibly be. This is mostly a challenge for challenge's sake, but because it seems like it's going to save me quite a bit of money I can't completely discount that as incentive. This year, my goal is to make all of my gifts for friends and family. Cool, huh?

Alright, that's not all of it. My goal is to see if I can keep from spending over $100 total on all of my supplies for making gifts this year. Parsimonious Penny-Pinching! This will be the perfect way to save money, but it'll also encourage me to use what I have around the house: stashed fabric and fiber, half finished projects, things like that.

So... If you're a friend or family member following my blog, you may want to read sparingly over the next several weeks. You're welcome to follow me in my adventures in frugal holiday spending, but just know that I'll be posting updates and tutorials here. Of course, I have several things planned, so you could always follow along and try to figure out what it is I'm planning for you!

If you're not a friend or family member, follow along! Join me, even! If you do join me in my ridiculous challenge, or if you run a similar challenge, let me know and I'll be happy to share information on your challenge here as I blog. 

Are you planning any fantastic challenges for the holidays this year?

Dark Days of Winter Challenge

Well, the Dark Days of Winter Challenge, hosted this year by Laura from Urban Hennery and the whole crew (including myself) over at Not Dabbling in Normal, is getting ready to kick off... It begins November 27th and will run through March 31st, so I hope you're ready for some serious SOLE scavenging! SOLE stands for Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical - the four main principles guiding this challenge.

By signing up for the Dark Days Challenge, I am committing to cooking at least one SOLE meal a week. After that, I'll be posting about it here on my blog, and then weekly or biweekly we'll be recapping all of the participants' posts over at Not Dabbling. It's going to be intense! Last year there were tons of participants, and this year we're trying to work together to get even more!

I've been preparing by freezing local produce and eggs. This morning, my lady-chickens actually had left five eggs for me! This is a record. I think they loved the slightly sunny, warm weather we had yesterday so they went into overdrive. I had been getting an average of one and a half eggs a day, so.. Woo!



Some of my girls lay the most beautiful green and blue eggs (they're Easter Eggers - poorly breed Americaunas - mutts); the others lay light and chocolaty brown eggs, and the recent influx of nice-weather-at-the-end-of-the-season eggs means I have enough to freeze. I'm also planning to blow these eggs (as well as freeze the innards - dual purpose!) to use to make some Christmas presents. They're such pretty colors, it's hard to resist!

This leads me to my next question: Are you planning an ethical Christmas this year? Do you plan to do your holiday preparation and shopping Conscientiously? If so, I have another challenge that we'll be announcing soon - Stay tuned!