Friday, December 22, 2006

Christmas lists

GcQ posted about Christmas gift giving. I thought I would share our gift giving ideas...not that anyone probably cares, but I needed to post something, and the comment was getting too long on her site...lol

Just before Thanksgiving, I take the three kiddos out to a local mega store with a decent toy aisle. They each have a notebook and pencil, and we wander the store writing down everything they want. I don't care what they put on these lists...we've already made it clear that this is a WISH list and they may not receive everything on it. On Thanksgiving, when we're all sitting around moaning from eating too much, everyone gets paper and pen, the sale fliers start making the rounds, and the kids tweak and the adultsl create a list of things we like. Someone (usually me) types the list up, prints out copies of it for everyone, and off we all go. I like this better than registries. There's still the element of surprise, but no one is buying me more candles (which I love, but sometimes I feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of them) or clothes I won't wear. I can go out and purchase stuff for the rest of his family and not stress that they won't like it. Best of both worlds. This doesn't preclude me from buying them things not on the list that I think they will love. It also has the benefit of providing parent approved selections for the grandparents to choose from. All in all, it works well.

For work, I stress.

How do you handle gift giving.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Back in September I kept a notebook in my office. Every time a kid spoke of a potential gift idea (to give or get) I told him to write it in the book. It really helped.