12 Days of Responsible Shopping: DI Why not? Edition

 In which I bought like eight holiday gifts for $9.  I did.

how hard can this possibly be?  (photo credit: C)

We heard somewhere that MilSpouses tend to have tight budgets for holiday shopping, and for many of you badasses out there, where those dollars go is just as important as how many of them are spent.  If only there were a way to spend v small amounts of dollars on boatloads of swag while supporting dope causes.  Enter, the thrift shop.  Wait, Echo, I can't just give someone a used sweater as a present.  They would hit me.  In the face.  Relax.  I'm not saying give used.  (not in this post, anyway) I'm saying give handmade.  You've heard of buying stuff at thrift shops to make over and either use in your own home or re-sell it on Etsy for a profit, right?  People do it all the time.  See?

But what about those of us who are more paint-by-number than, um, talented artists?  Do thrift stores have jack shit to offer us?  Enter the craft kit.  It's the needle-and-thread equivalent of cake mix, and it totally still counts as DIY.  Ask Kilo.

Well, today we got all old school at Chez Badass and stocked up on some rockin' packaged projects.  YMMV, but in my case, the craft bin at the thrift store had like a dozen cross stitch packets from the Ford administration.  Seriously, did you know about this?  Look!

 If you can sew on a button and follow a pattern, you too can totally make bitchin' tiny ornaments, wall hangings, throw pillows, whatever and delight your entire family for a few bucks (and a whole rack of hours but what else are you doing?).

Here's a few tips to get you started:

• Don't ball up your thread like I did.  It doesn't help.  You might think that sorting out the threads is for tossers with nothing better to do, but first of all, you're the one who bought a cross stitch kit, and second of all, it will ultimately save you time.  Untangling gnarly knots that your ADHD ass did not anticipate is time consuming, and you'll feel like a tosser.  Trust me.
• Go ahead and buy like fifty cross stitch kits, or however many they have, because chances are, you'll be able to con your sister (or brother or neighbor or a stranger from OkCupid, whatever) into sewing with you because this shit is fun.  Yes, it is.  If you have like fifty (or even two), you can share.  This project will be some no-joke time consumption and you are prob expected to socialize this time of year.  Don't be selfish.  Tis not the season for hermiting with your craft projects.
• Finish your project!  You can do it.  When the fuck-its set in, I borrow a tactic from long-distance running:  shift your focus from the twelve miles that remain to the next step you have to take.  Tell yourself (in a firm but loving tone) that you don't need to do twelve miles, you only need to take one more step.  Repeat.  Rinse, and repeat.  

For more about how to choose, start, and finish your (holiday) DIY projects, visit our friends:

• Apartment Therapy: Restart a Languishing DIY Project
• Lifehacker: Have a Start-to-Finish DIY Holiday
• About.com: Thrift Store Bargains

And, finally, we'd like to recommend checking out your local AmVets NSF thrift store for both donating and shopping.  We are very happy with the chapters in our areas, and hope that you find as much awesome swag as we did.  Here is a link to find the AmVets chapter closest to you!  

Working on Thanksgiving

Family separation is one of the most difficult aspects of military life, and during the holidays this is especially true.  After spending several decades being part of a military family, I speak from personal experience. 

Being together is important at Thanksgiving, it's important at Passover, it's important on St. Patrick's Day and it's important on birthdays.  Spending holidays in the same room is never a given for soldiers and their families, so you celebrate together as hard as you can, whenever you can.  Can you imagine what it would have been like to have had my dad home for Thanksgiving - JOY!- only to spend the meal staring at empty chairs because my mom and older brother were out doing their time working for $9 an hour?  I can because I've been there-  and it sucks.  I realize that when soldiers marry police officers, firefighters, medical professionals and other essential jobs that keep us safe and don't have holidays built in, families have an additional burden of separation.  It's understandable.  But empty chairs and uneaten meals are hardly justified by a day of sales at the strip mall...aka Black Friday.*  

"there are many like it, but this one is mine."  photo credit:  adam peck via ThinkProgress

This week I've gotten myself into a tremendous lather over the War on Thanksgiving- along with pretty much everyone else.  What is UP with Big Retail trying to cancel Thanksgiving for their workers?! 

As many military spouses work in retail, along with the highly visible Big Box efforts to recruit veterans and milspouses, I would argue that this may have a disproportionate impact on military families.  On a practical level, during deployment, many families function as de-facto single parent households, and military families are less likely to have relatives close by- which means that if mom is deployed and dad has to work at KMart, the kids don't simply celebrate with grandparents- the holiday just doesn't happen.  On the sentimental level (it is a holiday, after all) our time together is so limited. For many families, Thanksgiving is the only holiday they will spend together this year.  I could also argue that Thanksgiving's status as a uniquely American holiday contributes to its significance in military households.  In light of those factors, Big Retail's actions seem especially wrong.  Consider the financial stressors that many military families are facing- and the career limitations available for spouses, it is highly likely that thousands, if not millions, of military households will be directly affected by these greedy self-serving shenanigans.

Of course, there are counter arguments to be made about how cash-strapped military families depend on Black Friday sales for makin' spirits bright (lalala!), and that employees need the "extra" money they can earn with one more shift to work.  To the former, I'd question whether one could really "depend" on getting a flat-screen tv for $25 or whatever, and I'd also point out that retail has a knack for cutting hours elsewhere to avoid paying employees overtime.  Please tell me you've heard that before!

What do you guys think?  Are we accustomed to separation or off-calendar celebrations and thus take this in stride?  Or are we super-double irate and ready to boycott?

* Black Friday is so-called because retailers run in the financial red (at a deficit) for the whole year and then get back in the financial black (making their yearly profit margin) thanks to the bump in purchases that marks the beginning of the open Christmas season shopping.

*ECHO*