Shopping At Home

It simply can’t be done. I cannot go shopping this year. I can’t drag three little kids through the snow and wind to find the best price on the thing that will make their faces light up on Christmas morning. I can’t even find a few hours in which to go Christmas shopping for my husband. The stores are too far away, and I can’t leave Seth for that long.

Thankfully, all my shopping has already been done. From my office chair. Yes. This is the first year I’ve actually done %90 of my shopping online, and I’m loving it.

If you’re stressing out about getting your shopping done – don’t! There’s still time to mail order stuff, and it really is a great option! It’s fast, easy, and -best of all – usually cheaper!

Here’s what I got for my kids…

These are all toys my kids have had a blast with at other people’s houses, and I knew they would love them. They seem to spend half their play time ‘cooking’ and making ‘picnics’ so I figured some faux food would be a great addition to our toy collection, and Melissa and Doug make some nice sets.  Jesse is so interested in letters, I knew the see and spell puzzles would give him hours of enjoyment while also being great preschool fun. And the dollhouse people – they don’t have any small people to play with – no one to drive the trucks or play in the block houses they build, so, it’s time. (A dollhouse will come later, as soon as Claire is old enough not to eat the small pieces!).

I spent just under $60 and, of course, no shipping on orders over $25!

Knowing exactly what I wanted ahead of time was probably what made shopping online so easy. But if you’re starting from scratch with no inspiration, message boards, reviews, and amazon itself can help you brainstorm.

Another great gift idea for kids is books. As I’ve said, I’m done with my kids for this year, but I hope to add these titles to my bookshelf in the future:

We got “Duck on a Bike” at the library last month and somehow it got left in the car. I found it the day the books where do back! But I made time to read it to the kids because it looked so cute – and when I was done I knew I wanted to own it. Let me tell you, a book has to be really good for me to want to own it, ’cause it means I’m gonna be reading it over and over and over…but I think this one would make me smile every time. The illustrations are great and it has a delightful surprise ending.

Different Duck – just as cute and really fun to read aloud. It has a delicious rhyming lilt to it which lends itself to Jesse ‘helping’ me read it – he finishes the word at the end of each line. I’ll be sad when this one goes back to the library tomorrow.

I didn’t realize this was a Christmas book till the last page. (Must have been one of those days!LOL) Cute text and adorable illustrations. Would be a great book to get for Christmas and kept with the Christmas stuff so it came out each year to be novel and fun again. (That’s what my family did with a whole collection of Christmas-themed story books. Totally fun tradition.)

So, what percent of your shopping do you do online? Do you decide what you are getting in advance, or do you go shopping looking for inspiration? What’s the gift you’re looking forward to giving the most this year???