We went shopping today and made it our first annual “buy gifts for ourselves event.”  We spent, at the most, fifteen minutes in one store, and had to buy at least five gifts for ourselves for a maximum of $25 during the entire shopping trip.  It was a lot of fun.  Rich bought himself socks, a brush to clean his gas grill, three books and a Yankee Candle device that makes our cars smell good.  I found the Yankee Candle device (I’d never seen them before), and I bought one as well…I also bought a hard covered Mandala coloring book, a can of pumpkin spice room spray, lipstick, and a couple of small charms for on my Davinci bracelet.  We both ended up going over our limits by $2, which we considered fair enough, since we were so close to our budgeted amount.

I have to say that it was a lot of fun, and Rich wants to do it again next year.  It was entertaining trying to find things quickly and on a budget.  We had found some old gift cards with minimal amounts on them, and used those as well.  The monies on the gift cards were considered extra, so we didn’t count the gifts we bought with them in our totals.

All in all, I really recommend doing this, because it gave us something fun to do for Christmas gifts and we’re able to wrap each others gifts and still give them to each other on Christmas.  Of course, we always buy each other a Christmas ornament, (even though we don’t put the large tree up anymore), and I need to find one I think he will like.  I have some ideas, but haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for as of yet.  The first year we were married, we bought each other a Christmas ornament….if you look at the number of years that have passed, we now have seventy ornaments that we’ve given each other.  We also collect the Hallmark Frosty Friends series and an angel series from Hallmark, so we have about one hundred thirty ornaments in those collections alone.  It used to take Rich forever to put up our tree, but times have changed and we’re not as ambitious as we used to be, so we put a smaller tree up and minimally decorate it.  All right, to be completely honest, we decorated this tree a few years ago, and once the season is over, we cover it with a huge plastic bag, and put it away for the next year.

I remember when I was a kid, that our aunt used to do that with her tree and I was so disappointed that she didn’t take time to decorate her tree….I get it now…if we had little kids to entertain with our decorations, it would be different, but with just the two of us, and minimal guests, there’s no point in spending hours decorating.  We’re happy that we do as much decorating as we do….Rich thought he wanted one of the light shows that will shine through a window and make it look like Santa is inside the house..It also has Halloween scenes that are really spooky.  It was over $50, and Rich really wanted it, mainly for Halloween.  I bought it and he tried it out and decided it was so blurry that you can’t tell what’s going on in the video, so back it went.  I think the tree is plenty.

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