Giving Gifts That Homesteaders Really Want All Year Round

The Tale Of Two Stress Balls

Hi everyone and welcome to the special edition episode of the Homestead Education podcast. That was really hard to say for some reason. Anyways, this is a special edition that I’m doing for the holidays and it is on Homestead gift giving. So gift giving can really happen year round, but in the name of the holidays, I figured I would go ahead and release it. Now I did think that it would be fun to start with a little story for you guys about gift giving that involves my toddler terrorist that you guys are all invested in at this point. I’m gonna tell you the tale of two stress balls. So a couple of weeks ago, my husband and I and the babies, Branch and Wade, the two and five-year-old and our 14-year-old son Wyatt all went down to Coeur d’Alene, which is a few hours away from us for me to go to a doctor’s appointment.

The kids were really patient. Well, I had a long doctor’s appointment so I thought, well I have some shopping to do that. I don’t really want them to go to all the places with me, so let’s go to Walmart first and let each of the kids pick out a little toy to play with. So Wade ended up finding himself this stress ball and I mean it was, I’m putting my hands together like you can see it, but probably about the size of a softball. And I mean when you squeezed it, it was like the really weirdest feeling and stuff. And I was like, okay, let, let’s do it. You can have it. So we go out to the car and he’s playing with his stress ball and you know, I tell him, make sure you don’t give it to Branch. Branch will bite it and then you won’t have a stress ball. Branch is really bad about eating all the foam balls and stuff.So I knew that this was gonna be a problem.

So we go to the next place we needed to go, which was Bed Bath and Beyond, and I left the kids in the car because you know, I had my 14 year old to be there with them. I come out to leave, which by the way, they had like nothing I wanted there. I swear they were out of everything. It was so frustrating, especially when we drive two and a half hours and I’m thinking, oh, I can pick up all the things that I can’t get in my little Podunk town while I’m in the big city and they have nothing. I don’t know if this is an issue going on everywhere, but I was frustrated. So I get out to the car and poor little Wade, my five year old is just in like full crocodile tears and I mean he’s so sensitive sometimes and I’m like, buddy, what’s wrong?

And he shows me this deflated stress ball with what looks like Elmer’s glue oozing out the side. And I go, oh no, did you hand it to branch? And he’s like, no, I wanted to know what would happen. So I bit it myself, <laugh>, and I’m just like, why would you do that? I’m like, you know, the 14 year old is all afraid he is gonna be in trouble. “I told him not to bite it and as soon as I heard like the air escaping, I knew there was a problem” and I’m like, it’s okay. I mean, I’m sorry Wade. I mean he is just like probably the most depressed I’ve ever seen this kid be. And like I said, he’s very sensitive and he’s always really sweet and helpful. So like I hate it when he has those feelings. So we start to drive out of the parking lot and I take the ball from him and it is like oozing this like Elmer’s glue stuff out all over my hands and I’m like, I’ve gotta figure out something.

So as we’re leaving, I see a dumpster for a fast food restaurant and it’s open, but it’s got one of those cinder block walls around it. I’m like, I’m sure there’s probably some rule that I’m not supposed to throw it in there, but I was like, I’ve gotta get this thing out of the car. So my husband rolls up next to it, it’s pouring down rain. So rather than get out, I rolled down the window and I try to throw this ball into the dumpster, but of course because it is wet and sticky and gooey and just my luck, I throw it and the thing hits the cinder box and this white goo goes everywhere all over the cinder blocks, the ball like rolls up inside the cage where I can’t even get to it now and I’m just like, go, go.

I’m convinced the gooey ball police are gonna come after us or something. And my husband tears out of the parking lot because apparently, he thinks that he is gonna get caught by the gooey ball police too <laugh>. So we’re driving down the road and again, poor Wade is just crocodile tears. So we get up to the next town, which there’s another town that has a Walmart and I, you know, I whisper to my husband, I’m like, let’s pull in and get an antidepressant, you know, hint, hint, get a new stress ball. And he’s like, yeah, I was thinking the same thing. So we pull in and I go in, they don’t have the same stress balls, they only have one about the size of a tennis ball, but this one is like a color-changing neon, like purpleish pink one. And I was like, that’s kind of sweet, you know?

So I take it back out to the car for him and I, while I was in there I got a branch, a fidget cube that was quite big. It’s about the size of like a Rubik’s cube or something. Anyways, we’re driving home, it is pitch black at this point from this Walmart. We have a good hour and a half drive home through the middle of Nowheres and we get probably 10 minutes from our house that I hear “no” <laugh> and like I reach up and turn on the light to see Branch with both hands over his mouth with like this complete shock to look and pink goo oozing back out. So apparently these balls are pressurized and Branch somehow got a hold of it. Turns out later it was because Wade had to play with his fidget cube. So branch thought he should get the stress ball, which is completely why we were trying to keep the stress ball away from him.

We pull over real quick and my husband is like reaching into Branch’s mouth and scooping handfuls of this pink goo out with his hand out of his mouth while I’m trying to look online and see if this stuff is toxic. Because even though the ball was only about maybe the size of a tennis ball or like a, yeah about a tennis ball, I swear there was like 10 times that much goo in there like it was everywhere and it was neon pink and the whole back of the car was neon pink. And there’s a turnout somewhere in north Idaho that is completely neon pink now too because where do we put all this goo that we’re like scooping out of this baby’s mouth of? So yeah, our tale of two stress balls was also how um, apparently we littered all over North Idaho because our two kids cannot figure out how to not bite one.

Homestead Gift Giving

So anyways, I don’t know if there was a moral to that story except for just, oh my gosh, like even when you try to do like good things sometimes you get these wonderful adventures and I thought you all would enjoy that. So onto my topic of homestead gift giving stress balls are not great homestead gifts for small children. FYI. Now it might seem a little early for this topic because I absolutely promise you that my tree is not up in the middle of November. I guess I say the middle, it’s only about a week before Thanksgiving. So I probably could get away with my tree up, but it is definitely not up. However, we are rapidly heading into the holiday season. Plus let’s be honest, homestead families can be challenging to buy for at Christmas or other gift giving occasions, and I mean for air quote, normal people would shy away from buying the woman of the house an appliance. Personally, as a homestead wife and mother, I get super excited for new appliances during the holidays. Similarly, my husband gets super excited for a warm pair of socks to do his winter chores.

In fact, some of my favorite homestead gifts have been warm winter clothes and appliances that I have a hard time purchasing myself. Like not a hard time financially, like a hard time like splurging on it. But I’ll get into the women’s splurging thing. I mean, really for the women in your life, anything that seems like a splurge, even if it’s not expensive, like moms, wives, any other woman that is investing all of her time and effort into a homestead, her family, or both is probably not investing in herself in enough. And that may be because she’s too busy to remember or she feels guilty spending her time or money or something that maybe is frivolous. So think about those women. Uh, for myself getting a year’s supply of hair ties would be like, it would be wonderful because between myself and my teenage daughter, we go through a ton of them and we both have a ton of hair that constantly needs to be tied back when we’re working on the homestead.

Think Practical Homestead Gifts For Woman

I mean, I guess just what I’m saying is that think practical as well. Also, anything that they can use or produce with, think gardening, supplies, chicken supplies, and homestead books. And I’m not talking about like a little shovel set. We have those seed starting supplies, vegetable seed sets from heritage seed companies, a new incubator, or a gift certificate to order chicks from an online hatchery. Those might seem like chore things for somebody else, but for us, those are the things we want. On the softer side, a beautiful new journal or a homestead planner would probably excite the heck out of any like woman in your life. I have found that it’s usually the women who get really excited about the research and the planning and the men who get more excited about the tools to complete the task for them. Now those homestead guys, holy moly, can they be hard to buy for?

Think Homestead Gift Supplies For Men

But I guarantee tools are always appreciated. If you can afford it, try to invest in the best tools you can afford. Like one really solid hammer rather than, a hammer and screwdriver and wrench set. Like I would choose just the more expensive hammer because like a lot of the inexpensive sets that are available every year for the holidays are often like poorly manufactured and can break and end up in the junk drawer. And this isn’t a hit at the gift giver at all, but tools are used hard and tools that can break can be a nuisance or even a safety hazard. So in, so just take that into consideration when you’re buying, like if you’re like, I have 20 bucks to spend on this guy, seriously buy the $20 hammer, not the $20 set that has everything in it.

Like more is not better. Now in the case of my husband, books don’t really excite him, but every year I end up getting him a homestead how-to book that gets more use than he’d ever admit. Plus, the great thing about reference books and how-to books is that they can be used again and again. Plus in the case of my husband who has never really been a fan of books, I remind him that if we ever have like some sort of shutdown and didn’t have access to electronic information, a well-stocked library could be life-saving. Um, I have this huge fear that like Pinterest is not gonna be available one day. And so I print out everything. And honestly, like, I think it was Thanksgiving a couple years ago, Pinterest went down and I was like, see this proves that, you know, cause like the recipe I wanted I’d saved on Thanksgiving.So really those books, they’re handy.

Homestead Kids

Now kids can be equally challenging because many homeschool and homestead families aren’t big on supporters of like video games, cell phones, electronics, and other highly commercialized or addictive gifts. Now I’m not saying that these are completely bad. We have a video game system in our house and I usually buy all the kids a new video game, like to share every year for Christmas because winter times really the only time that I allow video games. Last year they got Farm Simulator, they all had such a blast with it. Now I do get cell phones from my older kids and I think that there’s plenty of free options for music and games, but if someone asks that they can get my kids an iTunes gift card, I usually say that’s fine. It’s a nice treat, but something that I wouldn’t wanna spend my money on.

When you’re buying gifts for like teens, I mean really think hands on stuff. Things that like, you know, gets them back involved with the family, um, something they can build with, something they can learn with. You know, even the girls, like there’s some really great companies out there that make super, um, like good for you organic like makeups and creams that young girls aren’t learning about because they only hear about the drug, like the supermarket stuff. So really consider some of those.

Remember Small Businesses for Homestead Gifts

Now when you’re shopping, remember to buy from small businesses locally, those are always super important. Um, but also in some of the online spaces that really support small businesses and creators. Etsy is a great place to start because it’s a platform that protects the buyer. These are people that are doing it. The ones that are out there making an effort to support their homesteads or to stay home with their kids.

And I know many of you are also trying to make additional income yourself. So don’t forget about these small businesses when you’re gift giving because these are the people who really like get it and understand what you want and need. And you’re not supporting a corporation, you’re supporting a family. Now when my, for example, when my Etsy or my website gets an order, my phone makes a little like chi ching sound, my kids get so happy and like think about how happy that would make a family like in the holidays, buying the little ornaments that they make and stuff like that. I mean just, it’s a, it’s a consideration. So I’ve been spending the last couple of years researching how children learn and non-electronic activities, um, for them while I was creating my curriculums. And I have so many great ideas that just didn’t like line up with the curriculum, but I still think are really positive gifts for men, women, kids, all of the above.

12 Days of Homestead Gift Giving (Sign-up Here)

And I wanna share that with you guys. So I decided to create the 12 days of Homestead gifts. It is emails sent daily to your inbox for 12 days of homestead gifts that are hand selected for every homeschooler or homesteader or yeah, homeschooler homesteader in your life. Um, you can sign up for it at thehomesteadeducation.com/homestead-gifts. I’ll link that in the show notes and I mean these are just really great gifts for every occasion. So like save ’em and share ’em with other people. There’s a lot of like popup sales that happen, especially during like Black Friday or you know, cyber Monday or Christmas and July on Amazon. You know, all those things. And whenever I find those, I always make sure that I put them on my Facebook page because I wanna help you guys get the best deals on the things that you need for your homes. So make sure you follow me on Facebook and that is the Homestead Education on Facebook.

I put that up throughout the year. It’s all for my followers. Sometimes I’m able to get deals where I can get you guys extra sales that other people don’t have through following my page. So make sure that you keep an eye on that. Um, some of them I do receive an affiliate commission for, but some I don’t because the most important thing to me is value to you guys. So I hope that this was helpful and, um, that you enjoy your bonus episode and that you head over there right now and sign up for that 12 Days of Homestead Gift Giving.