At one point this past Christmas after Emma had been opening presents for over 4 hours (she was so happy!), I kept thinking that she was gleaning the wrong message about holidays/gift giving/fiscal responsibility/consumerism. I know, she’s only two, but still…and the other day, she was reading and saw Franklin and his friends playing with Tinkertoys and turned to me and said, “we can just buy some of those”, my heart sank.

As a result I’ve decided that this Christmas, and times in between, we’re going to work at homemade/handmade gifts for our friends and family. We, as in Emma and me.  She seems to be so into this – so far, we’ve baked cookies and cakes together, planted seeds to germinate indoors, made cards and bookmarks and so on. Today we’re going to make some scrumptious looking chocolate pretzels on the Martha Stewart site, and if they work, take them as a hostess gift for a friend we’re seeing tomorrow.

Fingers crossed!