What Santa Brought Me.....Keeping the Costs Sensible

I know everybody is anxious to know exactly what presents Sluggy received for Christmas in 2012.
Oh come on.....you KNOW you want to know.  ;-)

Yes, we are lavish gift givers around here.
It's all about the bling.......the luxury........the decadence........
No, around here, we don't expect anyone to spend a big wad of cash on a pile of gifts for us.  We gift sensibly.  We give what someone wants/needs(within reason) and we try to get a deal if possible.

Here are a couple of gifts I got from extended family......first from my brother and his wife....

A pair of slippers and a cocktail shaker and mix

And from Hubs brother and the nephew.....

a Kitchen store gift card

We do a nuclear family Secret Santa gift exchange and #2 Son got my name.....

I got a book I wanted, "Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War Is Wrong", and a gift card to Ollie's Bargain Outlet "Good Stuff Cheap!".  #2 Son knows me too too well.....

And #2 Son gets extra credit because he bought the book from a used bookseller. ;-)


Then my older two kids, having jobs now and making a little of their own money, got some Christmas Spirit this year and decided to buy presents for each family member.  This was unexpected and yes, the thought of it was the best part of the gifts!

So #1 Son bought me....

Candles that smell like cookies and Cherry Blossom Bubble Bath

And the Daughter got me this.....

An Olive Oil Pump/Sprayer to break my addiction to PAM. lol

Then Hubs bought me a book.....Hubs considers a book the "perfect gift" so I can pretty much count on a book for Christmas....lol.....

Gotta love Stonewall Jackson!

And "Santa" filled my stocking with this strange mix of goodies....

2 packs of safety pins(I asked for those!lol)
Gas treatment ?
Post-Its ?
Chocolate coins ?
a high class bottle opener ?
I am still shaking my head over most of this stuff....I think Santa either lost his mind or had too much egg nog before he got to our house.lolol

As you can see, we just live on the edge, walk on the wild side, spend money like it's going out of style!!
Not.....

But here is the one thing I asked for and they & Hubs actually got for me.....

While the kids were all home at the same time for the Holidays(which doesn't happen nearly at ALL anymore), they went up to the local portrait studio and had this photo taken.  I haven't had a photo of the 3 of them together done since they were in elementary school.  And the bestest thing about it?  They are actually smiling REAL smiles, not those faked ones I get when I ask them to pose so I can take a picture!

Of course, I didn't get the portrait until late last week, but it made my Holiday.
Yes, it did.



Sluggy

6 Things About Our Merry Little (Non)Frugal Christmas

Well I guess I could call our Christmas celebration frugal, if I couched it in terms of what we didn't do,  like.....
"We didn't fly the entire family to Vegas and spend Christmas wantonly gambling away our savings."
OR
"We didn't hit the local Mercedes dealership and there was no new car with a big bow on top in my driveway on Christmas morning."

Yes, compared to those two scenarios, ours was a very frugal Christmas. 8-)

Here is the main offender to our frugal celebration.....

A standing rib roast.
And here is why I have never bought one of these before, in my entire 53 years on this planet....

I about fainted after I saw the price in the grocery store! lol
And THAT was the "on sale" price.  Look above the yellow sticker part for the regular price for a 7lb hunk of this steer.....Geez!

It did look purty though, nekkid and going into the oven....

Unfortunately I don't have an "after" photo as I was too busy to snap a photo before serving it to my ravenous crowd......and there were no leftovers.
We almost had fist fights breaking out over second helpings.....


Now here are the Frugal Points to our Christmas Celebration.

1.  We stayed home and cooked.

2.  No relatives here that required anyone to fly cross country or drive further than 5 minutes away to get here. (Excepting #1 Son, who arrived on Sat. night, driving and he was in PA anyway.)

3.  Other than the roast, we made our meal from items in the stockpile(except for a couple of cans of whipped cream and a bag of carrots).

4.  Entertainment consisted of voyeurism like
Watching family members opening gifts.....

Tormenting the family dog......

Tormenting the children and spouse too by making them smile and pose for a photo.....

5.  Making food from scratch or buying complicated desserts from the Bread/Bakery outlet.
We had 5 desserts Christmas evening.....a cheesecake and Stollen from the Bakery Outlet, 2 kinds of pie and fudge(all made from scratch)

And scratch made rolls from my Great Aunt Lula's recipe.  I made a double batch of rolls actually, since they are quite popular and we hardly ever have leftovers.  So I saved myself some time and energy by making double to throw into the freezer for later.....IF they all don't get eaten in the next few days.....which they probably will.....
I made 11 pans of rolls, and I had 6 pans leftover when the clock struck midnight on Christmas night.

6.  We give sensible gifts mostly.  Though #2 Son's Christmas Wish list consisted of 1-a 2 thousand $ flute and 2-a $400 smartphone(which he can't afford to pay the plan for anyway), he received neither.
And he KNEW he wasn't getting them because this Santa mom doesn't roll that way.
We spend sensibly on children, even teenaged and almost grown ones.

When Hubs and I married, and thus marrying our vastly different Christmas traditions, gifts and spending were at opposite ends of the spectrum from what each other had experienced.  His family, which struggled financially for many years, didn't lavish money/gifts on the kids.  1 present was their norm.
My family, which had struggled early on but grew to be upper middle class and had parents who enjoyed spending their wealth and going into debt, thought nothing of dropping serious money on kids at Christmas.  In our family, there were many many gifts under the tree for each of us kids and usually 1 big(and expensive) present too.

So compared to Hubs parents, we are spendthrifts at Christmas, but compared to my parents, well, just call us Scrooge and a very Merry Hum-bug to you all. ;-)

We have a monetary limit for spending on gifts.  I try to get deals to make the spending seem like it's more than it really is.  I try not to buy mindlessly.....buying "things" just for the sake of buying stuff.  If it's a "thing" I buy, it's a thing that was asked for or a thing that is needed.  While I prefer to give services and consumables, it's very hard to do that with teens and almost adult children who don't live around here to buy services.  Since 1 is 21 now, buying consumables for him at least, adds a whole new dimension.

With my crowd now, MONEY is the most popular gift.  It always fits. lol

Now you will excuse me because I have $5 in +Up Rewards expiring today so I need to get up to Rite-Aid before the roads get any worse.
Yes, we are having a White Day-After Christmas here. 8-)

Merry Christmas!

Sluggy