I've been trying to finish up my Christmas shopping this week. I get a LOT of flack, every single year, from people who think I am annoyingly early with my shopping. I get it. I love Christmas shopping though. I love picking out that perfect gift for someone, even if it does stress me out at times. On my side of the family, we make lists. I love lists. You can't go wrong with a list. I often stray from the list, but at least that gives me a very good idea of the type of things someone is looking for.
My in laws, on the other hand, never do lists. And my in laws are VERY hard to shop for. Josh is hopeless when it comes to helping me choose gifts, so this is a point of contention every single year. This year, he came up with a great idea for his dad with no prompting. It was wonderful.
Anyway, besides my love of Christmas shopping, I start early to ease the financial burden. If I start in October and buy one gift a week, as long as we stick to our budget, by the time Christmas has come, we haven't had to go into debt over presents.
And with Christmas shopping comes my Christmas Budget Spreadsheet! Probably the most exciting part of it all. ;) I should find a way to make a bar graph when I am done shopping too.
This year, for the kids, we are trying to stick to this guideline:
I'm having trouble with this, as my instinct is to buy anything I think the kids might like. But thankfully, the logical part of me knows that a)I don't really want to go broke and b)they already have an excess of "things". Hopefully by limiting the gifts, it will make the ones they get that much more special.
Next week's post: Planning Paige's 2nd birthday (KIDDING. Settle down).
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