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This is Tami Brawner from Ask a Jewish Mom. I have been asked multiple times how do you make a budget for Hanukkah. Well, that is very different in all families but out of whole, most of the are pretty basic. The first thing that you need to gather for your Hanukkah celebration would be Menorah. Menorah should come in many different price categories. You can go from one which is really wonderful which is something that your children can make with these made from sugar cubes and some bolts from a hardware store: just glue it together and I bring this out every Hanukkah because I love it. You can have one that get at a gift shop or a gallery, which is a little bit more money but still not a lot. And, then there is another one that I played before out of clay in my kiln, it takes a little bit more of expertise but you can go paint your own pottery store and probably for under $125.00, you can make a personal one that is a absolutely beautiful. The next thing that you want to gather for your Hanukkahs would be a dreidel. They can be under a dollar at appliance store. Little plastic ones that you can get, you can get three or four for a dollar or you could be a little bit more elaborate and get a piece from a gallery and that obviously cost a lot more but it is something that we keep out all year round and it is a pretty piece of art.
Then, the next thing that you want to do with your Hanukkah budget is decide how much money you want to spend on each child. In our family, we like to give eight gifts for the eight nights of Hanukkah but that does not mean eight biggest. We like to give one really special gift that the children really wanted and then we fill in one of the other seven nights like little things that you would suburb to stocking stuffers a book, a CD, a game that they want, a puzzle, a gift certificate to their favorite restaurant. Anything but the important thing on our family is that I surprised them, they do not know what is in the package that I wrapped up. Sometimes, I tricked them by putting a CD on a really big box and we put them all out on the fireplace and they get to pick each night which one they want to open. So that will depends on how much you want to spend and divide it of any amount of children that you have and decide each one what they get for each night. For the adults we just like to get one nice gift, nothing really special it is really all about to children.
Then the next thing you want to decide for your Hanukkah budget is how much you want to spend on decorations but you have not worried too much because they do not sell much of the stores, it is not like Christmas. So we just decorate with blue and silver and light ribbons and sometimes we do not do anything, we just put them all around. The dreidel and really not much else of anything, I play the cookies. It is not about the decorations for Hanukkah, it is clearly about the presence, the family getting together and the food. As far as the food is concern for the budget, the most important food you want to have for Hanukkah are potato latkes. Now, there are relatively inexpensive to make, you could scrape your knuckles up by shredding down potatoes yourself but I do not think that is necessary. Let us all used it today but the packages that they sell, managed out it has a box, you just add a little egg and little water, maybe a little bit of oil. You fry up in olive oil and let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing like the smell of potato latkes cooking in the house. The children smells it from probably down the block, they come running. You probably your plays is gone before you even finish making them and let me tell you that smell will stay with these children for the rest of their lives. So it is about the dessert too. Another thing that I love to make with my family is chocolate-covered mashes: so easy, so delicious, everybody loves it.
Another thing we like to do at our Hanukkah celebration is each kid likes to light the candle, every other night depending on how many kids you have in the family. We really have two so every other night they fight over who gets to light candles and say the prayer, it does not matter how old they are, they still fight over it. The most important thing is just gathering in your family together having wonderful memories, you always like take picture of everybody tearing apart of gifts, always fun and I really do believe that during that, the kids will have wonderful memory and something that they would want to do with their children when they got older.
All right this Ask a Jewish Mom.
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