December already?

It seems everyone is getting ready for Christmas and stepping it up a gear! Decorations are flying up everywhere and towns are having Christmas Lights ceremonies. I feel i am letting the side down a litte, with the advent calendars on the door and cards recieved early in the holders on the wall...I'm done! LOL
I wont be putting the tree up until the children beging their school holiday,
I wont be wrapping presents (not that i have bought any) until at least Dec 20th and
I wont decorate the cake until Dec 22 when i am sure i cannot put any more brandy in it!
I'm not a scrooge though, not by any manner of means! This is how we do it in our house! Since we got married, since the kids could give input on when they want the tree up and since we are big on our own traditions!
I am in awe of everyone that can do it this early and not get fed up of it all by Dec 15th! I wish i was more like that..so i made an attempt on the blog and will add more decorations soon! LOL

I spent 3 hours studying today and am looking forward (kinda) to my run tomorrow! I will post to let you all know how it goes if it doesn't kill me! hehe.

My Christmas gift plans!

All we seem to hear about in the news lately is credit crunch, businesses failing, banks suffering, how to cope with the pressure of Christmas on a shoe string etc etc. It hits home when in one business 2 people are made redundant and everyone else must take a 10% pay cut from Jan 01 2009 (not where i work, but someone close to me.). I was chatting about this with a work colleague, who seems to think because we work in a Nursery we will all be ok. She cannot see that if parents are made redundant the first thing to go will be the childcare..so we lose the children and so on until we are over staffed and we all know what comes next. I have often wondered how my place of work has such a sharp turn around of staff. Having been there just over 2 years i have seen 20+ people come and go. I have questioned it privately. But only now am i glad that so many have left and moved on. It means that i am one of the longer serving workers and therefore i won't be one of the first out. Selfish, yes. Self preservating, yes. But no, it does not stop the worry.
Then i got to thinking about Christmas and coping with the family. So i have come up with a list of gift ideas that will work for me!!

1.My children will have their usual allowance spent on them.As we saved for that!
2.Rich and I are NOT buying for each other, not a thing..we want a new house
next year so we agreed on this!!
3.Nieces and Nephews..are all getting Books..3 for 2 offers everywhere.
Makes sense to me!!
4.Sisters / Brothers ect ect..The classic "photo in a frame!" and maybe some wine!
5.Parents - Photo in a frame and i am splurging getting books made for them!
6. Other children (friends of family) home made cards, gift vouchers for
sleepovers with the kids!
7.Friends - photo in a frame (so versatile!!) and vouchers for babysitting!

So hopefully it wont break the bank this year and we can enter 2009 even if not in credit!! We have collected our store points (Nectar vouchers) all year so they will pay for the Christmas food, Turkey etc etc!


Some of the Christmas cards to put home made vouchers in for Christmas this year.