Shop Local: A Christmas Challenge!

Recently, I blogged about a Winter Bucket List I had created for other families to complete this season. One of the items on that list was to “Buy a Gift for Someone”. This is something that nearly everyone will do during the holiday season, and one of the easiest items to check off of the Winter Bucket List.

However - anyone who knows me, and knows me well, knows how important it is for me to not only think locally, but to think, shop and buy locally.  This is important to me (and should be to you, too), because when you shop locally, your money is more likely to get invested back into your own town. 

In fact, studies show that approximately 51.1% of small business revenue re-circulates locally.  Basically, when you buy from an independent, locally-owned business, rather than a nationally-owned or “big box” business, significantly more of your money is used to make purchases from other local businesses, service providers, farms, and so on. This continues to strengthen the economic base of your community; more businesses thrive, which drives down the price of goods and services at those locations. Shopping local is a win, for everyone! (Well, except for those big-box companies I mentioned above, but don’t worry - they can use their trillion dollar bills to dry their tears.)

Because this is so important to me, I have decided to practise what I preach and put myself to the “Shop Local Christmas Challenge”. I have vowed to buy at least 90% of my Christmas gifts from locally owned shops, businesses, and distributors. The remaining 10% allows me some 'wiggle room' if I have an item or two on my list that I cannot find locally. In those circumstances, where I have to depend on a “big box” company, I will use a company located within my own town. Although this isn’t as beneficial as shopping locally – it is still having a small effect on my local economy and something is always better than nothing at all.

If you’re up for the challenge, I’ve included some helpful hints to keep your hard-earned money in your community!

1. Start out small. If this concept is new to you, or you are an avid big-box shopper, don’t feel the need to aim for 90% . Instead, start out by vowing you will find 5 items locally, or 10 – or half of your list. Find a number that you are comfortable with and challenge yourself to meet it. When you're dealing with small businesses, every dollar counts!
   
2. Get online! Access local shops in your community, easier. Nearly every small business or shop has an online presence in this day and age. Facebook is a simple and convenient place to find local businesses in your area.
   
3. Think outside of the box – literally! Shopping locally does not mean you have to be restrictive, a little more creative, maybe, but you won’t have to completely derail your gift ideas in order to meet the challenge. Do you have a local restaurant you love? Consider buying a gift card and spreading the love. Local wineries and breweries are perfect places to find something unique for a hard-to-shop-for person on your list.
   
4. Ask around! You would be surprised how many hidden gems you can uncover just by asking your co-workers, friends and family their favourite local places to shop. This is also a great way to find out about special deals that different stores may have going on throughout the holidays. It’s also a good idea to attend local vendor shows going on leading up to the holiday, where a large number of small businesses offer unique, handmade and local goods, all under the same roof.
   
5. Use your friends/family members who are distributors. Whether it’s Younique, Scentsy, Thirty-One, Tupperware, Origami Owl, or otherwise – we all have a friend (or two) that sell these goods as third party presenters/distributors. Allowing someone you know to benefit from your purchase works in the same way that shopping at a local storefront does!
   
6. It’s about more than just the presents! You can shop locally for everything – not just the gifts under the tree. This year, we got our pictures done by a local photographer. Added bonus? She included Christmas cards in the price of her session. 2 birds… 1 stone! When it comes down to collecting the ingredients for your holiday meals, don’t forget about local farmers and food providers in your area.
   
   
   
   Happy Shopping!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Winter Bucket List

   Like most 20-something year old, North American, middle class females – I love Fall. I love the changing colours of the leaves, and the sounds those same leaves make under your knee-high boots once fallen. I love playoff baseball. I love the freedom to wear an oversized sweatshirt, tights and wool socks, in public, as you proudly order a pumpkin spiced anything. I love making accidental eye contact with a fellow Fall lover and giving the “that’s a wonderful wool-knitted headband you’ve got there” head tilt, and having her reply with a silent “your flannel scarf is one that only dreams are made of” nod. 

   Like any good soldier of the Autumn Army, I know that this season kicks off, promptly, the Tuesday following Labour Day, despite what any calendar might suggest. It’s a glorious day when Fall kicks off, and a tragic one when it comes to an end. However, this year, I have decided to create a Winter Bucket List (similar to this Fall Bucket List I found on Pinterest) to help deliver myself from the despair of Fall ending, and give us some new activities to search out.

   I found, this year, that having a seasonal “Bucket List” to complete got us out and about even more than we usually would have. On a slow day (though, they didn’t seem to come around too often) we would use the list to search out a variety of local activities and events that would allow us to return home and check off an item or two.

    This Winter, as we collect memories and check off items on our list, I will be sure to snap a photo (or two, knowing me) and share them with you once our Bucket List is complete! I invite you to use this Winter Bucket List, or, create one of your own. Print it out, hang it up and enjoy making memories with your tribe! After all, ‘tis the Season! 

It's been a while...

Well... it's been a while!

So long, actually, that the last blog post I made,  I was patiently awaiting my over-due daughter (Ryan Alexandra), who is now two, and in a few months going to be a big sister! Some women "nest" when they are expecting, but apparently, I write.

This is us - Kevin, Ryan and I, announcing the growth of our tribe. Photo compliments of Open Shutter Photography by Rebecca Kalp. 

The last couple of years have been the best of my life, and I mean that. I've learned so much about myself; learning  who I am as a Mother has forced me to also learn who I am as a Christian, who I am as a wife, and who I am as an individual - something that any mother will tell you is usually the first aspect of ourselves to go out the window when we enter the raw, real, beautiful, challenging, life changing world of motherhood. But this is a little deep for a re-introduction to the blog. So, I will get into some of those details in posts to come, when I need to unload my thoughts onto someone other than my husband, who *bless his heart* has had to deal with my never-ending curiosity and middle-of-the-night epiphanies for the last 8 years. 

It's November! And what that means, if you are a fellow holiday-lover like myself, is that we are smack dab between two festive seasons. I can thank this stretch in the calendar for my most recent (actually, my first-ever) "Letter to the Editor" of my local paper, The Chatham Daily News. I believe in what I wrote in that letter, even the chopped up, character-maxed version which was submitted to the paper, and so I share it with you.

Dear Editor,

With the holiday season fast approaching, I believe this letter to be quite timely. Everyone, whether they are a parent of a child attending a local public school or not, has their own opinion on how public schools should go about celebrating holidays. 

On one end of the spectrum, you have those who believe that all Christian holidays should remain in public schools; there should be Christmas concerts and Easter egg hunts, and everything in between. On the other end, there are those who believe every holiday – religiously founded or otherwise, should be removed from every public school in order to avoid the possibility of offending anyone who’s cultural and religious beliefs do not condone their participation. 

I am not sure if I belong on that spectrum at all. Here is why:

I whole heartedly believe that it is important for my children to take part in festivities that celebrate our Christianity. So important, in fact, that I would never leave it up to the school they attend to lead those festivities. Yes, it is a matter of such significance, that I would (and do) take the time, every single day, to educate them on Christian heritage, teachings and tradition so that they are sure to never solely equate Christmas with presents, or only associate Easter with chocolate treats in baskets. Celebrating their Christianity is not the responsibility of the public school that I send them to, nor do I rest it on the shoulders of the educators employed by those public schools, whose own personal beliefs may (or may not) reflect our own. 
However, I have a difficult time wrapping my mind around the fact that washing our public schools clean of any religious holidays is the right answer. We say it is in the name of progression, for the purpose of diversification, but is it? I attended public elementary school in Chatham for 9 years. Some of the memories that stand out to me, are:

-Spinning dreidels and singing along to what we learned were traditional Jewish songs used to celebrate “Hanukkah”, as one of my Jewish classmates gave a speech on how the holiday came to be. 

-Attending an annual assembly in our school gym, where if we sang the lyrics to “Christmas in Killarney” loud enough, our Principal would run through the aisle and “click his heels” in the air to the lyric “how grand it feels to click your heels” while the entire auditorium of children roared.

-A guest speaker visiting my second grade class, bringing with her a large drum and teaching us 7 different African greetings. We learned this was a Kwanzaa tradition, and although I couldn’t reiterate those greetings verbatim for you today, I do recall being so interested in this celebration that had existed for hundreds of years, one that I knew nothing about.

Those school memories differ greatly from the home memories I was making at the same time each year, those consisting of packing Christmas Shoeboxes in our church basement to send to those less fortunate overseas, participating in my churches Christmas concert, setting up our living room nativity set and reading the story of Jesus’ birth. Never did I feel offended, though, to learn of how other cultures across the world celebrated their holidays.

So my questions is, is removing these celebrations, and in turn the corresponding lessons and teachings that invoke thought, wonder and exploration of cultural differences the answer? Or instead of taking holidays out of our public schools, should we be making the necessary changes to include more? Should we be less invested in making sure that nobody is offended and more concerned with the idea that everyone is involved, trying harder to guarantee that each student is given their own stage (in an environment free from judgement) to educate their classmates and teachers on the customs and traditions that they and their families take part in, whether those families be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Agnostic, Atheist or otherwise?