Yes, I’m already thinking about Christmas.  Actually, most of you probably are too I’m guessing.  If you are like me, you feel like the Fall season flies by.  School starts, then you have birthday parties and football games.  Then, before you know it it’s Halloween, with Thanksgiving right on it’s tail, and then there is it.  Christmas.  It’s here before you have time to get all your shopping done early, like you say you are going to do every year.

Oh wait, is that just me?  Well, anyway.  I HAVE to get my shopping done early this year.  We are traveling to Australia for Christmas and I have to PACK all of the gifts.  And still have room to bring them back, plus others.  It’s going to be interesting.

So, first of all…saving MONEY. My family and my husband’s family all decided a few years ago to draw names for the adults.  With my family, for example, it’s me, my husband, my sister and her husband, one of my Aunts, one of my cousins, and my parents.  These are the people I would usually buy for before we did the name drawing, with the exception of my cousin, but she wanted to participate in the draw names, so she’s in!

We all agreed on a dollar amount.  We chose $50.  This way everyone can get one good gift, opposed to a bunch of little things worth ten bucks that you don’t really want anyway.

We use Elfster.  You enter all who are participating and you can also exclude certain people, like husband’s/wives from getting each other, which is cool.  Then, it randomly generates your pick and emails it to you, secretly.  We always keep it a secret who we have.  Though, I always know who my hubby has since I do all the shopping.   It’s also got a place where you can put your wish list for your Santa to see what you want.

We only do Elfster for the adults since everyone wants to buy for all the kids.  So, we save money with our niece and nephews in Australia by buying things here and taking (or mailing) it to Australia.  Good stuff is way cheap here in comparison.  I’m talking WAY less.  Plus, I can get summer stuff on sale, since they are going into summer in a few months.

For our boys, I just keep reminding myself that it’s not HOW MUCH we spend.  Our youngest, doesn’t even know about Christmas, for starters.  And our oldest is happy with even a few things.  If it’s something he can pretend play with, he will be busy for hours.  Honestly, he would probably just be happy with candy, since he rarely gets any.  I just have to remember this and not get caught up in the Christmas buying frenzy.  Luckily, my husband’s family is further along the less is more end of the spectrum than my family.  I’m really looking forward to that this year, actually.

Now, for saving SPACE! Since we have to pack all (or at least most) of our gifts for the kids this year, we have to think SMALL.

So, I’ve been trolling Amazon looking for ideas for small, packable gifts that will still make an impact and be fun for our older son, who is four.  Our youngest (currently 13 months) won’t really care since he still won’t really know what’s going on and will really only want what his brother has anyway.  That’s how he rolls.

Here are some of what I’ve come up with so far:

• LED head lamp – like for camping.  He would LOVE this.
• Wikki stix – are these fun?
• stomp rocket
• Wishing Chair Again by Enid Blyton – I’ve been looking forever for the over sized version of this and finally got one off ebay for a steal!  So siked.  He asks me all the time if I’ve found it yet.  He loves the first one, Adventures of the Wishing Chair.
• Brain Quest -  these are great for planes too
• My Very Own Name book – we already got him this too as he wanted one after seeing the one we got our youngest for his birthday
• Gift voucher for something like a jumping castle place (you know those places that have about 10 jumpy houses).  We have one near our house and he’s always asking to go after going to a birthday party there.
• I want to crochet both my boys stockings before we go, but I am unsure if I can manage it.  I don’t know how to crochet, but my Mom is going to try to teach me this week.

Hmmm, I actually thought I had more ideas than this.  And frankly, I have no clue about what to get our youngest, who will be 15 months by then.

Any ideas ??

You can find more tips of all sorts at Works for Me Wednesday.

Related posts:

1. Spending Less and Earning Extra

09/22/2009 | Frugal & Green Living, Money Management, Travel.

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