Christmas Clubs

[maxie]

OMG! I have had a Christmas Club since the first baby was born 40 years ago. They have been wonderful! My first was for $50.00. Can you even imagine shopping with that kind of money? We had a Fashion Lane in town and around Christmas they stocked all types of Fischer Price toys. I could put the boys entire Christmas on lay a way and when the Christmas Club check came get it all out and ta da...one big Christmas for two little boys. As they grew the amount I invested grew but I am still in love with my Christmas Club. Today I opened the 2014 account and the teller handed me a stack of papers and it made me think. We used to get an ornament for opening an account. My mom and MIL would open theirs and I had 3 new ornaments every year. My lay a way days are over and I'm not even sure if Fischer Price is still the big deal of toys for the little ones....and I haven't gotten a free ornament in years. Of course the grocery store no longer has a dish a week. My first set of pots and pans came from buying a pan a week from the grocery. AND encyclopedias! one letter a week until you had them all. If you let me ramble on I will have to mention cottage cheese glasses. Those I hated because they made my teeth feel funny but they were free. Golly, nothing is free anymore. Our kids will never know the excitement of looking forward to next weeks pot. Seems we could get a glass or something from the gas station and didn't something come in the laundry detergent? Wow, we used to get a lot of free stuff. I kinda miss the good old days.

[hrhouse1]

I was the neighborhood hoarder of Green Stamps. Would just almost've been willing to trade anything I owned for someone's stamps. But hey......my girls had a Jungle Gym and a swell swing set in their backyard because of those blasted stamps ( even if it did take me a loooong time to get enough stamp books filled for them.

Also collected enough of Kroger's "dish of the week" to make a nice 12 place setting of those "not too shabby" dishes.

[JoGee]

I remember Green Stamps. As a bride I had filled 1 book, and set it in a cupboard. We moved to TX where my first baby was born. A few months later a photographer was going door-to-door in our compound, where other young brides had babies too.
I couldn't afford the pictures, so he asked me what I had to trade, and I said "only a book of green stamps". He said, "that will do", and that's how I got my first baby's first picture.

My mom used to take her mom and me to the movies once a week because they were giving out a set of dishes she wanted. So that's how she got 3 at a time. She bought a hutch to show them off in when she had the whole set for 8. She washed them and said they go on the top shelf of her hutch. I did exactly as told. I didn't know that the shelf was unstable and dipped like a teeter-totter, many of the dishes fell out and broke. I was maybe 7-8 years old.

The cottage cheese glasses...bright colored aluminum? I ordered a set with matching ice cream dishes several years ago. Never used. I bought them for nostalgic purposes. I used a glass to make an ice "glass" in the freezer. My uncle, who always pulled tricks on me, wanted a drink of water. I filled the ice glass with water and gave it to him. He was halfway done when the glass cracked at the center, sending cold water and ice bits on him. He laughed.

Oatmeal brought us tin cups and dishes with Nursery Rhyme pictures on them. Loved those when I was small. I knew all the characters and rhymes.

Laundry soap, I think, brought us dish towels.

[BarbCA]

When I was a teen, my dad smoked Raleigh cigarettes. They had a coupon on each pack. I asked Dad if I could have them. I saved up enough to get my first set of flatware.
I saved Green Stamps and Blue Chip stamps after I was married. I don't remember what all I got but I did get a lovely bedspread and a Pyrex double boiler. I think a got an ice chest, too.