A merrier Christmas (for everyone)

At the moment, the blogosphere is being dominated by What to buy guides and Wish lists (see below - I am no exception). In my family, we pretty much stopped giving gifts at Christmas. We felt that it got so expensive for everybody, especially since we're all kind of spread out (just getting the tickets to go home for Christmas... ouch) and that we would rather spend our money on actually getting together. I have to admit, I do love giving as well as receiving, but the way we spend our hard earned money around the holidays is just ridiculous. Especially when you consider the state of things in the world. At the moment, many of the international aid organizations have some great gift ideas. Over at Unicef, you can buy things such as vaccines, mosquito nets, school kits and HIV tests. Via Save the children, you can help sponsor Midwife training (love this) or why not buy a baby scale, some eggs or a bike for a health worker? 

If you still want to give an actual gift to someone, Save the children Sweden has a lovely design shop with loads of beautiful things (also shipping internationally, if I understood it right). I love this drum/storage box, designed by Acne. Half of the money you spend in the shop, goes to the organization and their work for children's rights. 

Me and Andrea, we'll be keeping it extremely simple this Christmas. We're not exactly rich right now, having chosen this life, and next year, there are (hopefully) plenty of changes coming our way and every cent counts. The only ones getting gifts are my precious niece and nephew. Oh, and Charlie of course. She definitely deserves a big, nice bone.

Update: I posted a link on Facebook about this, and this morning I had an e-mail in my inbox from Unicef. My mum had read my post, and bought 40 doses of vaccine as a gift for me. My mum is great. 

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