Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Christmas {Planning} in July!

Well, folks, Christmas will be here before you know it!  And one of my goals for this year is to shop early and another is to gift items that make a difference some how. 


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(Christmas 2007)


How do I plan on doing this?  Through adoption fundraisers, helping families bring their little ones home.  Etsy shops that are ran by adoptive families.  Shops that promote social change and fight to end slavery or have a goal of helping mothers get on their feet. 

And here are a few options of where I might do my shopping or maybe some ideas of where you could do yours.

Shop to End Slavery has some great shops linked up for items from clothing to food and drink to housewares.  I personally love how they have sorted the shops by category and link to the individual shops.

Consider shopping from the Sparrow Fund.  It's their mission to help forever families be united and they also support artisans from other parts of the world.  Two blessings in one!

Check out Gifts with Humanity.  They have a wide variety of items produced in different areas of the world including America, Asia and Africa.

Shop from The Mercy House Kenya (shop is currently closed, but will be re-opening and restocked in August!)

Purchase clean water for a community who needs it.

Maybe check out the Compassion Catalog and purchase in honor of some one you love.  Their hearts will be warmed knowing you thought of them and that another life is being cared for.

Or maybe the Samaritan's Purse Catalog has something you wish to purchase in honor or in memory of some one on your gift list.

The World Vision Catalog also has some amazing ways to spend your Christmas budget.

Consider sponsoring a child through Compassion International or sponsor an orphan with ShowHope.
One other thing we plan on implementing in our family is the 4 gift rule…

four gifts


This may be a little hard to get used to because we love to give gifts and training our child to focus on REAL gifts.  But this will make us much more intentional in our gift giving and still nurture certain family members love language.

Are you getting ready for Christmas yet?  How do you handle gift giving?

(Also, if you are a fundraising family, please leave a comment and I would love to include you in this post or future posts about intentional gifting!)

**Linking up!**



a-wise-woman-builds-her-home

1 comment:

Sherry Reese said...

This a great resource. I love compassionate giving! I actually did the World Vision one for Christmas one year in honor of my nieces and nephews and my little boy and printed the cards to give them. They were too young to understand, but I just hoped that the cards would be a reminder of the good they can do for the world. I also gave them a little something fun to open too. I love the 4 gift rule and may just have to implement that one.