35 days

i don't know if i should be stunned that christmas is a mere 35 days away or amazed that vrock & i have survived this year with all of its ups and downs.

regardless, i feel somewhat accomplished today.

with everything that happened this year, christmas is going to be much smaller than it usually is. (read: done on the cheap) my family isn't huge and his isn't really until you start counting the nieces & nephew. all in all, with the select few friends i also exchange with, we're talking 18 total people including vrock. (let's face it, i buy the majority of the gifts. he buys for me and has input for everyone else.)

that's a lot of people when you're trying to keep costs down. (and i cut out 2 people last year.) i used to try to spend around $100 each on my parents & brother & vrock. that's just not possible this year. it's so hard to buy for most people these days that i'm trying to figure out what to do.

for his mom & sis, he wants to do food items, which should be easy enough and shouldn't cost too terribly much. i was able to get a bunch of gift certificates for really cheap a month or so ago, so some will be receiving those. (lifesavers i tell you!) and i think we're getting omaha steaks for my grandparents & his brother & sister-in-law.

but i did score today. i was able to get all of vrock's gifts (all 2 of them) online today. and on sale. woot! shipping was free and all told, i spent $108 and change. i know he'll love what i got and i'm just relieved to be done with at least one person.

i'm almost done with a few others that will be getting the aforementioned gift certificates. all i need to do with those is to bake the pumpkin bread that i'm going to send along with those. but i can't bake them too soon or they'll go bad. we don't have the room to freeze them, so those will be a weekend before christmas type of thing.

but at least i've started. back in the day i would have been completely done shopping by now.

i miss those days.