Success Story | December 2021

Chandra DeRamus

“Preparing Families for Holiday Spending thru the Use of Technology & Videos”

During the year, families are very interested in spending time with loved one for the holiday to make memories that will last a lifetime. In the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, some families are still finding it hard to develop a way to spend time with each other and make it more affordable to celebrate and enjoy their holiday meals.  In Hardin County, several families have experienced some kind of change in their income and spending habits after the economic effects of covid-19.  The prices of things have gone up in most areas such as gas, taxes, housing cost (electric bills, internet service, etc.) and food.   To meet the need of this, Kentucky State University’s(KSU) team of professionals working within Cooperative Extension decided to address this need by coming up with some fun, practical programs to assist families in saving money for the holidays.

            For December 2021, a team of KSU specialists, and the family and consumer agent developed a three-week series called “Countdown to the Holidays,” that featured 3 videos and 5 recipes on “Ways Save money for the holidays”. The videos featured tips and ideas that showed people how to create their own holiday decorations (wreaths) and gifts at home instead of just buying a gift card or purchasing a gift item from a store.  In addition, several recipe cards were included in this program as a way to help limited resource audiences with some meal planning ideas on what kinds of meals to include for their families.  Some people do have a hard time deciding on what kind of meal to prepare for the holidays and they waste money by going back and forth to the grocery store and buy things that they may not use.  This results in food waste for some families because they end up getting rid of some of the food items after the holidays because of overspending.  Sometimes people buy too much of the wrong foods for holidays such as too many desserts or too many foods that are high in calories (pastas, recipes that include bread).  This program suggested several vegetable dishes that were much more healthy options versus just suggesting a holiday meal that only includes items that may be higher in calories such as breads or desserts. 

One of the videos featured called, “How to Roast Pumpkin Seeds,” showed program participants how to make healthy snacks for the holidays.  The other two videos were called “Gifts in a Jar: Inexpensive Holiday Gifts & Wreath Making for the Holidays.” The Gifts in a Jar video featured gifts that showed participants how to make a gift that you could put in a mason jar for under $8. The jars would be filled with items such pastas & seasonings to make a bowl of soup, cocoa and marshmallows, and peanuts & chocolate morsels.  The last video featured ideas on how to make a wreath.  There were about 5 recipes that were included in the program for “Yummy Sweet Potato Casserole, Old-Fashioned Stuffing, Green Bean Medley, and Turkey Gravy. As a result of the videos & recipes that where posted we had about 1,724 people to look at the videos thru the Hardin County Extension Facebook page. The videos all had several techniques that were suggested that could be used to assist families in finding more successful ways to introduce more cost saving tips for their families.  Our team will continue to offer these kinds of programs so that families will eventually learn the value of creating goals for their spending and then reaping the rewards of savings after they start to save money from creating their goals to create meal plans and design gift items. 

		Pictured Above & Below: Flyer from “Countdown to the Holidays” program for families for savings techniques on spending for the holidays.
			Pictured Above: This is a one of the recipe cards that was shared on the Hardin County Facebook page for the “Countdown to the Holidays,” holiday program on savings for families.

Pictured Above: Video for “Gifts in a Jar: Inexpensive gifts in a Jar,” was featured on the Hardin county facebook page for the “Countdown to the Holidays” program.