A Gift from Me to You

We only have three more small presents to buy, two of which Patrick is taking care of this afternoon. Patrick's goal was to be done with Christmas shopping in September, which was a little more lofty than my goal, which was to have them all bought by Thanksgiving. So, we didn't meet our goals this year, but we seriously did better than any year before. Thank goodness for Amazon and other websites that have free shipping and even better, no taxes!

Also, I have been loving all the wish lists out there, especially the thethingsiwant.com ones. I love being able to hit the "Reserve" button and go find the exact thing that person wants, it makes me happy!

I think this has also been the Christmas that I have been the most organized. Creating an automatically updated spreadsheet on Google to track gifts to purchase, ones already purchased and our spending budget has made things so much easier. I don't have to worry about using a jump drive or emailing myself the latest version and it's accessible on any computer that has an internet connection. I wish they had had this when I was doing spreadsheets for our wedding because then I could have even added viewers and collaborators, hmm... actually, maybe that's a good thing. What's the saying? Something about too many cooks in the kitchen...

For next Christmas, we're going to try to get a major jump on things and start right after the New Year. I hope no one minds getting a 2007 The 365 Puppies a Year Calendar and 1 year old Christmas candy - how long do m&m's last anyway?