Thanks for all the replies to my question - all were good points. For clarity I probably should have said that my husband and I are in our 60s - he's retired and I'm praying not to be laid off for another couple of years.
My sisters and bothers are younger, have no need to reciprocate (we are childless) and most of them have not taught their children (ages 14 - 33) to say thanks - even when they open the gifts in my presence. I think I'm done gifting, except for the ones who manage to acknowledge the gift in some form or other. ... View related article.
We've tried the 'draw a name' routine and for a few years it worked, but some people just have to give gifts. Our current solution is to all still give to the children, but the adults in our family do mainly food gifts. One sister-in-law makes fudge we all look forward to. Last year we had cookies, bars, brownies and breads. I made several kinds of soup (what else) and froze it, and let people pick the kind they preferred. Just had a big cooler outside and people took the soup on their way home from my Dad's.
In the past we've had homemade jams, pickles, herb vinegars, flavored oils and hot fudge sauce. Even if you don't cook, buying someone a food item they would consider a treat doesn't have to break the bank. I gave a couple of tins of smoked mussels to my father-in-law one year and you'd have thought I gave him caviar!
My dad loves marmalade, so all year long I keep an eye out for unusual varieties like grapefruit or lime and give him a basket with several jars. If you do the gift giving at the family level, it's a start at weaning people away from individual gifts; and if the gift is edible, it's not adding to the overload of 'stuff' we don't need. ... View related article.
Mix cold coffee and low-fat chocolate milk in a ratio that tastes good to you (I use equal amounts of each) and freeze in the drink container of your choice (I use 20-oz rubbermaid bottles - they are easy to clean.). Move a bottle from the freezer to the refrigerator at night, by morning it is on its way to being slush - a lower-cost, lower-fat alternative to the frozen Mocha drinks found at coffee shops now. I buy a gallon of low-fat chocolate milk and find it makes 14 drinks, so I only have to do this chore every other week. The caffeine makes me alert, the chocolate makes me cheerful, and I'm being 'green' because the bottles are reusable and saving $ too. ... View related article.
Bless you - 2 ten month old labs? Whew. That's like twin teenagers. Feeding them in separate spaces would probably help. If it's really bad, the separate spaces should have a solid door between them. We dealt with it that way - The 'old' dog ate in the kitchen, the rescue with food aggression ate in her crate and eventually in the x-pen we substituted for the crate - in another room. If you break the pattern, then you can do some re-training, making them work for their food with good behaviors: sitting, waiting, etc. Good luck. ... View related article.
