Beginning To Look Like Christmas

Christmas presents are still arriving daily and will continue to arrive until Wednesday of next week. Yes I know that's already the 23rd of December, but we got a late start on the shopping. -- thank goodness there is still time to have things arrived before Christmas.

We have never been ones to go extremely overboard with Christmas presents, but this year we decided to keep our out of pocket to a minimal and fund Christmas with ALTERNATIVE methods. With Swagbuck, Ibotta, and the reward system (point system) that my husband's employer offers we have only spent to date $15 out of pocket and will most likely spend about $30 more out of pocket. Making the total out of pocket expense around $45 -- $50 at most

I can't disclosed what I have bought for the kids, mainly because they have social media accounts these days and might see it, but I can tell you what we got them has a retail value of $100 each. So that's $200 for the kids.

Then we bought for 7 nieces and nephews. Each of those gifts have a retail value of about $15.  So that's another $105 dollars. I won't disclose what we bought for the same reasons as the kids. Well not all of the nieces and nephews have social media, but the parents do.

Grandparents, 3 sets, gifts have about $15 dollar value each as well.  So that's another $45.

So add it up:

200 + 105 + 45 = $350.  And knowing that out of that $350 only $50 max is our total out of pocket is pretty cool!!

Now, that we are just over a week away from Christmas and Sunday is the 4th Sunday of Advent we decided it was time to decorate the house for Christmas. We took out the Christmas decorations. Not much -- several years ago we got a new living room set that limited our space for Christmas decorating. So we just put up a tinsel tree, stockings, small nativity set in the living room and a red table cloth on the table and Santa hats on the chairs in the kitchen.

I think next year we might go with a more traditional tree even if it's a small tree. I have been batting around some ideas in my head on how to make a Advent/Christmas tree.  -- One tree that serves for BOTH seasons. In years passed we have done a Jesse Tree -- so it will be a tie in to that. I dare not say more. I don't want my ideas swiped by other people.  -- Swiper No Swiping -- HAHA that was throw back to our Dora days!!!

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