Thursday, December 31, 2009

Reuseable Christmas Hampers/Stockings

M and I have managed to continue our new tradition that we started for Christmas 08 by buying his family gift cards and food hampers again this year. The idea was to make Christmas less commercialized or to at least make it look less commercialized, in preparation for something that might or might not happen in the near future. Unlike last year, M was all for it this time round.

Inspired by those bloggers who make Christmas gifts by hand, and increasingly wishing to minimize our impact on Planet Earth in some little ways, I made three Christmas stockings that can be filled with food and gift cards year after year.This meant that we didn't have to wrap the food up in paper or cellophane. I have noticed in the past that the paper and cellophane was almost never reused, even though they both make great material for children to reuse in their art and craft activities. This year we didn't buy from Suga or Haigh's. We stuffed the stockings with a gift card each, organic tea from Oxfam, mini soft toys from IKEA, boxes of Walkers shortbread, Cadbury chocolates for the kids and Lindt chocolates for the adults. There was also an extra block of Fair Trade dark chocolate from Oxfam for M's Dad. We are aiming to fill the stockings with more ethical products next Christmas.

Making the reuseable stockings doesn't mean that we no longer use wrapping paper. We still have at least half a roll of wrapping paper that I will continue to use until it runs out. After that, I will start making individual drawstring bags to 'wrap up' birthday pressies. They can be used over and over. At this stage, I am not sure if I will make bags of different sizes to hold different sized pressies or make each family member a personalized bag. What do you think? I am sure that M would prefer the second option but that would mean that we will have to shop for pressies that will fit in the bag! That is kind of restrictive!

2 comments:

achan said...

That's a great idea and your stockings are so cute!

Have you ever thought about using Japanese furoshiki's? It is basically just a piece of square material, you could make your own. I often wrap things up in handkerchief's or teatowels! Have a look at this website, they have a section on wrapping techniques too.

http://furoshiki.com/

The bags are a good idea too especially for kids as they will use them again.

Priscilla said...

Hello Achan,

Thank you for telling me about Furoshiki.com. I just went to have a look and I love the wrapping techniques.

I did actually think about furoshiki when I was writing this post but I failed to recall the word from my smallish pool of Japanese vocabulary. LOL.