Another year, come and gone.  They seem to be zipping by so fast now.

It’s it funny how when you’re young, the year just seems to draaaaaag by, but the older you get, the faster it seems to pass?

I really need to get my hiney in gear this year with a lot of stuff.  Getting back on our Medifast diet (shakes are ordered and will get here next week).  Try to post more often here and on my other blog.  Get moving on my polymer clay play and start making beads to hopefully sell.  Maybe get back into making jewelry.

For the moment though, now that the Kiddo is napping, I need to dash off to the store and get her some more clothes, and pick up a few more card making things so I can finish making her b-day invites, while her dad hangs out playing games while she sleeps.

When I get back I’ll probably start my new Death Knight on World of Warcraft – he got my other character to level 55 last night so I can now create a DK!  Yay!!

Whew. That’s all done with… now to recover over the weekend and go back to the grind on Monday.

I did quite a bit of baking this week. Cookies all day Tuesday, and a “deep dish pumpkin pie” last night while we were putting the Kiddo’s “Santa” toys together.  I discovered that I need one of those masher/cutter thing-a-ma-bob’s the next time I make one of those pies.  My crust was definitely not “crumbly”, and it still turned out ok, but I wonder how different it would have been if I’d had the right utensil.

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All the shopping is done, now I just need to wrap the presents that aren’t the Kiddo’s so I don’t have to worry about rushing to get all that done before bed.  So I’m about to go do that now, and then after my cookie baking marathon yesterday, I need to pick out a bunch of cookies to take to the holiday party later tonight.  Then after we get home from that, I get to make one more dessert to take over for Christmas lunch tomorrow.

Maybe after we get home from lunch tomorrow I can finally relax for more than an hour.  Eesh!  I’m really glad I had this week off, I never would have gotten even a quarter of what I had to do, done, if I had to work.

Well, off to wrap gifts.  Happy holidays!

For my husband and I, anyway.  Both of our “big gifts” arrived today, and since mine was ungainly large, we went ahead and “gave” each other our gifts.

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I did most of my shopping online at Amazon this weekend, so most of it should be showing up starting tomorrow hopefully.  I only have a few things left to buy for my MIL and GMIL (grandmother-in-law) that Amazon was either out of stock or just didn’t even sell.  For those things I may actually have to venture out and go to an actual store to get!  *gasp*

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I’m not sure why, but I just can’t seem to get into the Christmas spirit this season.  Neither of us has an ax looming over our jobs, so no worries there.  We have a bunch of stuff we posted on craigslist and got a lot of inquiries, so there is some extra potential Christmas money there… 

I just can’t quite put my finger on it.  Maybe I’m just picking up on every else’s mood?  I don’t know.  All I do know is there is a little over two weeks left before Christmas and I haven’t even begun my shopping yet.  I am usually a procrastinator but even last year I had most of my shopping done by now, or at least it was ordered and was en route to my house if I bought it online, which most of my purchases were.

I think it partly may be due to that on Sunday I drove 20 miles with the item that would net us the largest amount of cash in one purchase, and waited for 20 minutes for the guy to show up and he was a no call / no show.  He hasn’t even responded to the email I sent later asking what was up.  Communication just completely ceased.  At worst maybe some unfortunate incident happened, at best I hope he was just a flake.  I haven’t heard anything from him so I offered the item to the next person who inquired, so hopefully that person will not flake out.  It really puts a damper on my mood when that happens.  The extra money was going to go toward getting some extra things for the Kiddo and maybe pad our limit for everyone else’s gifts, too.

Originally I had tried setting aside any leftover money out of my weekly lunch allotment, but I have maybe half as much as I should since I ended up spending some of it at a fall festival we went to in October, and another sum went to some new fall clothes for the Kiddo in November.  Ah well, we can make do but the extra money off craiglist sure will be nice.

Now to pull myself out of this funk and at least get SOME shopping started or risk stuff not arriving before Christmas…  

I was essentially off work for five days for Thanksgiving weekend, starting with Wednesday and ending Sunday.  But it was by no means restful.  I think the slowest days  I had were Wednesday and Sunday.

Wednesday was originally supposed to be a day for me to work from home so I could attend a special T-Day lunch at the Kiddo’s preschool, until she got sick the  night before and I ended up doing my work later that night after everyone was in bed, so that in case she was still sick Wednesday I could give my full attention to that.  Wednesday night I made a dessert to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. View the rest of this entry…

Every year Amazon has this neat program where they list three different products that, if it receives enough votes, will be available for certain selected buyers to purchase at a GREAT discount price (sometimes like 50% off).  This year they have 18 different products to vote on in six rounds.  If you vote, you get entered into a drawing to get a chance to buy the product that wins the vote in its round.

We participated a couple years ago when the Wii was especially hard to find, and we won the opportunity to buy it, and got it for my husband’s brother as a Christmas gift.

This year they have a choice of three PS3 bundles – each with a PS3, a game and a movie, ranging in price from $199 to $229 (the $229 version actually has 2 movies, I think, both of them James Bond movies).  So whichever one wins the vote will be available to 500 people to buy (I think the purchase limit is one per winner in these deals).  The other “rounds” have other different products, round 3 has a 46″ Samsung HDTV for $699 (should it win, of course)!

Not every one will win of course, but hey it’s worth a shot if you’re eyeing one of the products as a gift to someone, or even to yourself, and that product wins the vote and you get drawn to be able to buy it if you want… so go visit Amazon to participate in the voting… You never know, you may win the chance to buy a great product at a super low price! But hurry, the first rounds end soon – as of tomorrow!

My husband and I have wanted a hybrid for a while now, but it just hasn’t been in the cars, I mean cards. We are only making payments on one of our two cars, but it is almost $300 a month, and there is still at least three years left on it I think.  We’ve kind of been eying the ones that would get us the most MPG due to how far we have to commute one way each day.  Anyway, it will probably be a while before we can afford buy one.

But if you own one already, or know someone who does and can’t think of anything to get them for Christmas, there is a site I found that sells loads of accessories geared toward hybrid cars of all makes – Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Dodge, Saturn, etc., etc.. It’s called Juiced Hybrid, and they even have a special right now where you can receive free shipping on purchases over $99!  Considering how some things like rubber all-weather floor mats and cargo liners can be pretty heavy, this is a great bonus!

Browsing around their site it appears a lot of Juiced Hybrid’s products are geared towards the Prius Hybrid, which happens to be one of the cars my husband and I have considered looking into buying at some point.  But they carry items for other hybrids, like the Saturn Green Line VUE and AURA, the Honda Civic & Insight Hybrids, and even the Porsche Cayenne Hybrid, and loads more!

Some of the items at Juiced Hybrid also appear to be compatible with non-hybrid cars, so if you’re looking for car related gifts, don’t discount this site just because it is specialized for hybrid owners.  Floor mats are pretty universal within model types, so what works in a Hybrid model will probably work in it’s non-hybrid sibling model, so if your dealer is out of stock and you’re in need of new mats, it’s worth a look!

I sure haven’t.  *eek!*

I have a general idea of what I may be getting for hubby and the Kiddo, but that is about it.  Oh, and maybe for my parents too, since there is a company that is giving employees at my workplace a pretty good discount, and they have stuff my parents (especially my dad) like.  So I may do my shopping for them thru this place for the 25% discount. 😀

Otherwise, I do kind of know what I will probably get for my siblings.  Let’s see… for my sister, I will probably get her family a W@l-M@rt gift card so she’s restricted to getting groceries and such (rather than a Visa card she can use to blow the money anywhere).  And maybe some handmade soaps.

For my brother… probably handmade soaps, and a visa card (he is a bit more responsible).

My other brother… I may think about finishing a scarf I was *going* to give him last Christmas until he landed his butt in jail for a domestic fight with my mom & dad.  And some soap.

Yeah, I’m probably going to do soaps again this year (buying them, not making them myself).  Everyone on my side of the family seemed to like them, and handmade soap is supposed to be better for you anyway since it doesn’t have all the harsh chemicals that manufactured soap has.   I did most of my shopping for the soaps on Etsy.

As for my husband’s side of the family… I have no idea yet.  I originally thought I may make the ladies some jewelry again, but I have few – if any – ideas of what to make just using the supplies I have on hand, and I don’t want to spend the money just getting supplies for jewelry just for them.  I think last year I spent right around $200 just on supplies, which isn’t that bad I guess for six people, but I don’t know if I want to do it again this year.  I may stick to their lists this year and go off-list next year.

So anyway.. how’s your shopping coming?