November 2008

Cost cutting tips for Christmas gifts

The plunging economy and job cuts have taken their toll on many families and parents are worried if they will be able to afford Christmas gifts for their children. Here are some money saving tips to bring you some holiday cheer without lightening your pocket book :

1. Makes gifts. Home made cookies, a scarf from an old silk shirt or bed linen, a bow tie from the sash of a dress, a bracelet from beads leftover from a craft project…can you see the possibilities? Chances are people will love these gifts because you took the time to make them. What’s more, since you are making them, you can personalize it too. Gifts do not have to be expensive. Just creative, thoughtful and useful.

2. Gifts don’t have to be things. They can be activities. When was the last time your family spent time together actually doing something? It could be as simple as a walk around your block, stopping to admire the decorations in each house. Or a picnic in a park. Or volunteering for your community. Or even organizing a Christmas play with the neighborhood kids. In today’s hectic lifestyle, TIME is the biggest gift.

3. Drawing names of family members written on pieces of paper. This way, each member of the family picks out one other member’s name and they only have to get one gift for that person. So everybody still receives a gift, and nobody has to blow his or her budget.

4. Kids could make coupons for services you can offer. They could be ‘Mow Lawn’, ‘Clean Dishes’, ‘Fold Laundry’ that could be redeemed at a later time. What better gift can a child give a parent?

5. Use old magazine covers, newspapers, paper grocery bags for wrapping. Encourage kids to personalize them with art or poems. These make unique, inexpensive and attractive gift wraps.

6. Send free ecards. No matter how far or near your loved ones live, there is one gift that everyone can afford and everyone appreciates – heartfelt wishes. Sending free ecards is a great way to wish your loved ones with a personal message. Adding a picture and voice to the ecard personalizes it further. Select free Christmas ecards from gotfreecards.com.

Christmas Shrink your to-do List

Well, the elections are finally over, and you know what that means: it’s time to get ready for Christmas!

It seems like we’ve gotten to a point in our society where the period of time between holidays is counted in shopping days, rather than calendar days. It’s easy to get lost, and feel weighed down, by all the stresses that preparing for the holidays entails. You have to buy gifts, you have to wrap them, you have spend gas money going back and forth from home to the mall. You have to order that special present online and hope it arrives by Christmas, and you have to hope you don’t go seriously, seriously over budget.

At gotfreecards.com, we’re doing our small part to make the holidays just a little less stressful. Now, instead of adding the buying, addressing and mailing out of holiday cards to your already-overbooked to-do list, you can check out our free e-cards. Our animated free christmas e-cards don’t require that you make a trip to the department store, and all you need to do is give us the e-mail address of whomever you want to send them to. It’s that easy!

Christmas Carols

It’s funny how we change, as we grow up.

I’ve always loved listening to Christmas music, and as a child, my favorites were the funny, slightly-zany Christmas songs, like “Grandma got run over by a Reindeer,” and, “All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth.” Then, of course, as I grew older, I started to more deeply appreciate the ‘serious’ Christmas songs, like “Silent Night” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

Now that I’m an adult, I find myself gravitating back toward those sillier songs of my youth. I think the reason why has a lot to do with the beauty of the Christmas holiday itself. Those funny songs remind me of a simpler youth, of the joy of just being around people I cared about, of how much better I could make my day just by smiling.

Christmas, if you think about it, is about the same things. Christmas is about taking joy in simple pleasures of life. It’s about getting together with those that we love. And it’s about smiling, and making other people smile.

So even though I’ll always count “Silent Night” as one of my favorite Christmas carols, songs like “Grandma got run over by a Reindeer” will also hold a special place in my heart—reminding me what the holiday is truly all about.

Chritmas Ecards

It seems that Christmas is always just around the corner, and you never seem to stop scrambling for gifts. But with each year, it gets harder and harder to be original—and to not be boring!

GotFreeCards.com is a great solution to normal holiday gift giving. With our free Ecards, you’ll be sending a gift that not only will make your friend or loved one smile and laugh, but it won’t cost you a dime! That’s because we only have free christmas ecards at gotfreecards.com Just head over to our website, and browse our extensive collection of Christmas ecards.

Plus, all of our cards are animated Ecards. This means that instead of just opening up a card to read a couple of sentences, your friend or loved one will be treated to a fully-animated card! And remember: it’s absolutely free. Just go to gotfreecards.com, find the card you like, and choose who you wish to send it to. It’s that easy!

Love at Thanksgiving

Each year in November, we begin to assess all the gifts for which we are most thankful. At dinner tables across the country, we extol the wonders of a fabulous feast, of our comfortable homes, our secure investments and savings accounts. We regale family and friends alike with stories of our successes, and we gloss over our failures.

Gotfreecards.com’s free e-card “Thankful for You” reminds us all that we also need to be mindful of and thankful for romantic love during this time of year. This card features a woman who has made a list of each thing in her life for which she is thankful. She slowly begins to cross off food, water, shelter, and savings account. Once each item is slashed, she writes one simple word: You.

“Thankful for You” is thoughtful and romantic in its simplicity. It brings to light the basic human need of connection. Too often we take those we love for granted, when a simple gesture, like an e-card, will easily remind them how much we care. “Thankful for You” finishes with the line that sums up the best sentiments brought on by Thanksgiving: You are the one thing I’m most thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving, my love. Send your love a special card this season, and remind them how precious they are to you!

Keeping a Sense of Humor

As we gear up for the holidays, one important factor to maintain in our lives is a sense of humor. This Thanksgiving, send a FREE e-card to your friends instead of wasting hours surfing You-Tube for that eerie turkey video. Fun e-cards are a quick and easy way to put a smile on anyone’s face!

Two of our most popular funny e-cards are “Thanksgiving Rally for Turkeys” and “Black Friday.”

In “Thanksgiving Rally for Turkeys,” we are reminded that even the source of the popular Thanksgiving feast has one thing to celebrate: Vegetarians! A gaggle of turkeys carrying banners and signs show their support for herbivores. This e-card is perfect for those who abstain from meat, as well as that friend or family member who is notorious for scarfing every last morsel from their plate.

“Black Friday” cleverly reminds us that Thanksgiving is the predecessor to a whirlwind shopping adventure on what has become known as Black Friday. While many people spend Thanksgiving relaxing with family and friends, others use the newspaper ads and online specials to plan a shopping route to round up great holiday deals! Do you know anyone who would rather spend Thanksgiving with the circulars than the turkey? Remind them of the importance of family and friends with a super e-card!

Holiday festivities can be hectic and dramatic. Remind everyone you know to keep it light with a funny card from gotfreecards.com!

Thanksgiving Less Stress

Every holiday is stressful. But especially recently, too-high gasoline prices have added to that stress. Some—myself included—have even forgone traveling on the holidays the past couple years, electing instead to have a quiet meal alone, and then call family members who live far away to wish them well.

Even though the reasons may be due to the overall struggling economy, gas prices, as you no doubt have noticed, have dropped sharply in the past several weeks. I don’t know about you, but I’m spending about half as much money on gas now as I was a year ago. Of course this means a little extra money in the wallet, but it also means we can afford, at least a little more easily, to travel long distances to see our families on the holidays.

So this Thanksgiving, don’t worry about the economy for at least one day. For at least one day, just be thankful that it’s a little easier this time to make a long-distance trip out of town, to see friends and loved ones who lived far away.

Of course, even though you’re saving a little money, that doesn’t mean you should spend needlessly, either. One of those needless expenses is overpriced greeting cards from the department store. At gotfreecards.com, our free e-cards won’t cost you a dime, and all you have to do is enter an e-mail address to send it on its way. No stamps or envelopes needed for our animated e-cards!

Countless Ways to Say Thank You

Two words. Countless ways

When you appreciate someone, there are many different ways to say ‘Thank you’. You could make the effort to go meet the person and express your gratitude. You could pick up the phone and surprise him with a ‘Thank you’ phone call. If you get the voice mail, try to call back at another time, instead of simply leaving a message. Some of us prefer emails which offer another great option. But be sure to personalize each email instead of sending out a bulk email to multiple recipients. Traditional thank you notes never go out of fashion. They may be more time-consuming, and not many of us may have the patience to hand pick thank you cards and to pen our feelings of gratitude. But if we do take the effort, hand written thank you notes have a special way of touching people’s hearts and staying in their minds. They also give you the opportunity to convey your unique feelings for each person.

Sending personalized Thank you ecards are another wonderful way to say Thanks without spending a dime. When you choose a free ecard from gotfreecards.com, not only can you include your picture and personalized voice message, but also send creatively animated visuals to accompany your message.

Whichever method you choose, the sincerity with which you express your thanks is most important. Thanksgiving day offers us the opportunity to be thankful for all the gifts in our lives. Once a year may not be enough, but this Thanksgiving day could be a start to saying heartfelt ‘Thank you’s all through the year!

Thanksgiving = Turkey

For many, Thanksgiving is all about the consumption of turkey and the leftover turkey sandwiches the next day. But what about the turkeys? Every year millions of turkeys are raised for the sole purpose of becoming meals on Thanksgiving. How does this help us to give thanks?

Some might choose to ignore this fact, perhaps because they like that part of Thanksgiving, because to them, Thanksgiving = Turkey. They will defend the tradition, stating that we need to eat and that raising fowl for food is just something that is done; it is part of nature’s way, part of the food chain.

And yet there are many people who will do without the turkey, in the hopes that they will follow the President’s lead and pardon a turkey of their own. Perhaps they’ll be fine with eating just the pumpkin pie and the stuffing, for Thanksgiving IS the same to them even without the Turkey. It is a time for family, for togetherness, and yes for eating but eating other things perhaps not dictated by traditions. If you choose to start a tradition of your own, share your viewpoints and send some ecards from the Thanksgiving section that make a statement about saving the Turkeys and doing something new for a change. You never know, you might cause someone to go vegetarian this Thanksgiving! And that is ok, because it is still Thanksgiving, even without the turkey.

Gobble-Gobble

When I was a kid, it seemed to me that around November, school became a more fun place to go: there were treats all the time, holiday plays in the auditorium, and a couple of days off to look forward to. And who could forget the Thanksgiving arts and crafts! Every year in elementary school we had to make two things: a pilgrim and a turkey. The pilgrim was easy, we just needed to draw a big hat and a big buckle. The turkey was much more fun to make; we each traced our hands and creatively turned the thumb into the turkey’s head and the fingers into the colorful feathers.

Now that my kids are old enough for arts and crafts, I have been teaching them these age old November traditions. In the times of computer graphics and digital cameras, these activities are a bit too “cave-man” for my kids. But once I have their completed projects in my hands (of which I did most of the work) and stick them to the fridge, I am quickly taken back to my own childhood days and can’t help but smile.

You most likely know someone with their own childhood memories of holiday arts and crafts. Bring a smile to their face by sending them the free animated ecard, Turkey Hand. You’ll be sure to smile too, or at least say “gobble-gobble!”