Disclosure: This post has been sponsored by Goodwill®
The holiday's can be stressful and costly, between the gifts, the celebrations, and the decorating. We all want to give our children the best, and make the season as festive and fun as we possibly can, but it's hard. I'm a single mother of three, and my budget each month is so tight it squeaks, so I find this time of year particularly difficult.
Thankfully I do have an amazing man in my life who helps out to no end with the 'fun' things. And my kids adore him. Just last weekend we met him in Nashville so we could spend time with his family and celebrate Christmas (albeit a little early). We took the kids to Gaylord Opryland one evening to see all of the festive decorations and go on a boat road, and the following day we took my kids back to ICE, which is an amazing exhibit of ice sculptures (Snoopy themed) that you walk through. It's only 9 degrees inside, but they give you big coats to wear, and the kids loved going down a slide made entirely of ice.
If everyone can get over their head colds we'll be heading to the Christmas tree farm to cut down our own Christmas tree later this week. This is one of the highlights of the holiday season for me. I've found having traditions makes the holiday's that much more special. My daughter picks out a tree, and her brother cuts it down. We load it up on top of the car, bring it home, turn on Christmas movies, make hot chocolate, and put out a few festive treats while the kids decorate the tree.

Each year we've built on our Christmas decoration collection. We pick out a couple of new things before decorating and then a couple more at the sales after Christmas. Or sometimes we just make our own decorations. This year things are a little tighter than normal so we are relying on a lot of DIY.
I see a lot of people impulse buying at big name stores, but did you know that stores such as Goodwill have a lot of options at this time of year too? There are so many treasures that can be crafted from Goodwill finds and I'm going to share a couple with you that I did this week for decorating the mantel above our fireplace.