Before you do your Christmas shopping, watch this helpful video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmAm8GNJ_IA&rel=0[/youtube]
I haven’t done any Christmas shopping, other than ordering a case of Moxie for my mother and some Kona coffee for my brother. We don’t go crazy with our Christmas shopping. We did when my daughter was young, and we stopped doing it The Year Of The Furby. Remember Furby? My daughter wanted one desperately. Not just any Furby – this particular one. It was the only gift she specifically asked for.
I did everything but sell my soul to get that Furby. I blew the entire Christmas budget bidding on it on Ebay. But I shopped victoriously, and our Christmas happiness was assured. Since you can’t give a little kid just one present for Christmas, we scraped a few bucks out of the grocery budget and got some art supplies – colored pencils, fancy paper, pipe cleaners, and new Play-Doh.
Naturally, we put the Furby pretty far under the tree so she would open it last. The tension built. She liked the Play-Doh. The pencils and paper were a big hit. When she opened the pipe cleaners, she went completely berserk. “Pipe cleaners!! PIPE CLEANERS!!!!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you for the PIPE CLEANERS! I LOVE pipe cleaners! And they’re COLORED! And SHINY! These are so GREAT!” She immediately started making unidentifiable things with the pipe cleaners. She rubbed one against her cheek. (“They’re so fuzzy!”) My husband and I were practically trembling with excitement. We knew there was one gift left to open, and if she went nuts over the pipe cleaners, we couldn’t wait to see how she reacted to the Furby.
He held out the box – “Hey, this one’s from Santa!” She opened it slowly, still eying the pipe cleaners. My gaze was locked on her face, waiting for The Moment when she realized what the gift was.
“Oh – a Furby. Cool!” And she set it down and picked up a gold metallic pipe cleaner to twist into a crown for her Barbie.
This experience has saved me thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours when Christmas shopping. Our Christmases are just as enjoyable as they were before The Year Of The Furby, and January is better than ever without the dreaded onslaught of credit card bills.
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