A green and more adventureous Chirstmas

I was reading old archived posts at www.beingfrugal.net and in one of the posts there was comment by a reader with an idea I JUST LOVED!! and felt I had to share it here.

The orignal purpose of this comment was on how to make your Christmas "greener" by not wrapping gifts (save paper= saved trees and less garbage to our landfills) but I just love it because I know my kids would love it and I think I may try it this year (like I really need to add to my Holiday To Do List) anyway.. here is the idea.

Instead of wrapping all the gifts for your children- hide them instead!! Like a scavenger hunt. They would wake up on Christmas morning to find one gift each wrapped under the tree and an envelope in the branches of the tree with a clue as to where to go to find another gift. If the clue leads them to the hall closet- there they each find one more gift (unwrapped) and another clue. Continue with the clues until all the gifts have been found.

At Easter we do a scavenger to find their Easter baskets. The Easter bunny leaves a clue on the coffee table and leads them all over the house. After about 10 clues- the last clue will lead them to their Easter baskets and some gifts. They love this and ask for Scavenger Hunts all the the time.

This summer I went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of stuff and put it all in a box, then wrote clues for all over the backyard, and other outside areas. At the end of the clues they found the "treasure" (the box of dollar store items). They thought it was awesome.

So a Christmas scavenger hunt might be great!! My only concern is that- at our house- Santa brings a few gifts and mom & dad also put gifts under the tree for xmas morning. And since my 8year old is already beginning to doubt santa exists- to have a savanger hunt that "Mom & Santa" did together would totally blow my cover.

I am thinking of putting the gifts from santa under the tree and a note from Mom & Dad in the tree branches that would be the first clue to find the "Mom & Dad" gifts. Although the original purpose of this was to make a greener Christmas, with no wrapping, I would wrap my gifts anyway. Not that I don't want to be green but I have already wrapped their gifts for this year- and unwrapping them now wouldn't save any trees or make any less garbage.

So here is what I am thinking. This would work well this year for several reasons. The first being this is a leaner than normal Christmas so it is not like there was going to be a giant piles of gifts under the tree anyway- this may make the few gifts seem more exciting. Second, it will make the Christmas morning activites take a bit longer. I am thinking of having them run around finding the gifts but having them bring each one back to the tree before we move onto the next clue and then once all the gifts are found- then we will sit down by the tree and open all the gifts. Third, this year, by chance, I have the same number of gifts for each child. This does not always happen. I have a budget I follow and a certian dollar amount I stick to for each child- therefore, ususally- I end up with a varying amount of gifts- but they all add up to the same amount of money. This year I just happen to have 7 gifts for each of them that are from Mom & Dad. Also, the gifts are smaller (not cheaper- just smaller in size). Think iShuffle not Rose Petal Cottage. This will make hiding them easy this year.

So this would be a great year to try this. I am not sure I would do it every year. I think the novelty of it would wear off. But if I can think of some good hiding places, some good clues, and get it all put together "cute" so it really makes an impression on them. I will do it this year.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes.