Have You Finished Your Shopping Yet?

The race is on to get Christmas shopping finished up in time to actually enjoy the festivities.  I am down to a few gifts in my Amazon cart…OK 26.  Yes, I have 26 items sitting there while I decide if I want to buy them.  I know I don’t want ALL of them, so I keep sifting through and culling more until I have that perfect stocking for each person.

Last night I sorted through what I already have for my stocking gifts once again, evaluating and making lists of what I need to finish up.  With so many stockings to fill, I have to keep it organized.  I have 5 large elfa mesh baskets in my closet designated for stockings.  These baskets are intended to be used as drawers, but I just set them on the shelf and they are perfect.  I labeled them last week while my friend Becky was here.  I used chalkboard tags from my etsy shop and Chalk Ink markers to put the names on the baskets using wire.  It’s 2 people per basket and I toss the stocking items into the baskets as I buy them.

That makes it easier to keep up with, but I still have to look through it all repeatedly and keep a list on my phone of who I still need a few things for.  I can’t seem to hold that info in my brain anymore.

As I was I looking through it all again (which means using the step ladder to pull each basket out to see what’s in there) I think I can officially say that I am down to needing just a few small things.

Which leads me back to my Amazon list.  That’s the way to go…..no parking lots to drive around in circles looking for a spot to park or inside the store to wait for the world’s slowest cashier, wondering if you should change lines, but you never do, you just stand there.

Yesterday I went into Walmart to pick up a few groceries.  I am a big fan of the self-checkout, no matter how much I am buying.  I like to bag the items myself and watch the prices carefully.  But I was buying gift cards and I wasn’t sure if you could do those in the self-checkout, so I begrudgingly went to a cashier to pay for my things.  It was like torture.  She was slow and careless and uninterested in her job.  I watched her try to scan one of the gift cards over and over and it wasn’t working.  If I am ever captured and someone wants to extract valuable information from me, all they will have to do is threaten to make me go through the checkout at Walmart and I will spill everything I know.

In order to avoid ever doing it again, I thought I would ask the checker if I could buy gift cards in the self-checkout, you know, ‘cuz silly me thought she would know the answer.  But when I asked she literally froze and just stared at me.  No response, no blinking, just staring.  It was like a comedy routine complete with a raspy voiced customer in line behind me yelling, “Hurry up already!”

I couldn’t help but giggle, which really made the scene complete.  I’m laughing, she’s staring blankly and the woman in line behind me is pounding on the conveyer belt telling us to move faster.  The checker finally mumbled something unintelligible and I didn’t press her to clarify.  I just made a metal note to get my gift cards somewhere else.  I will drive to Siberia next time if that is what is necessary to avoid that episode again.  And you can’t drive to Siberia.  At least not from Texas.

I think I will just go ahead and order my last few items from Amazon and be done with it.  There’s really no need to drag this out any longer.  If I get any more crazy ideas to give gift cards I can just give the person money instead because basically a gift card takes money you can spend anywhere and turns it into money you can only spend in one place.

Then I will be finished, although I always have that feeling that I am missing something.  Inevitably, no matter how hard I try, I bring all of the stocking stuff out on Christmas Eve to discover there’s at least one child who has next to nothing and I send James to the grocery store to get whatever he can find.  This is how, many years ago, we ended up giving one of the boys a plastic, fur covered cat that had some kind of battery operated breathing mechanism and when you petted it, its stomach moved up and down like it was taking long, deep breaths.  It was the weirdest thing you ever saw and in a bizarre twist became that child’s favorite Christmas gift of all time.

Thankfully, since we  are only doing stockings for the kids this year, I don’t have to wrap anything.  But if I did I would follow my friend Sara’s tips because she is the gift wrap BOSS!  I will be adding big bows to a few things that don’t quite fit in the stockings (Shhhhh!!!  Do not tell James because that is against the “stocking rules”), but that’s it when it comes to wrapping for me.  2015 will go down as the year I didn’t throw my back out trying to wrap the gifts.

So, how’s your week looking?  Are you finished with your Christmas shopping?  I’d love to hear about you and what you do the last few days before Christmas.  Hop over to Facebook and join in the conversation!

Have a festive week!