Merry Christmas

I want to wish everyone out there a Happy, Safe and Merry Christmas. It is a wonderful thing when you can get together will your family and friends and share the day with them giving gifts and fellowship. Usually, we celebrate Christmas with my family, but this year staying home seemed to be the best thing to do this year. With gas prices and other expenses that comes with visiting family members, I decided that for me this Christmas was about making a budget and sticking to it. We thought that we should only spend around $1000.00 dollars total including gifts, Christmas dinner and decorations. This was going to be the total opposite thing we did last year. Instead of trying to buy things the kids would be playing with only a couple of days and asking for another toy, my husband and I decided to give the kids a couple of gifts (one or two high ticket items) and take the family out to eat at one of the buffets here in town.

Being here in Las Vegas, we have a wonderful variety of options for restaurants and buffets. We chose to go to the buffet for Christmas brunch. Since it has been a while since we have eaten together at a buffet, I found this to be a treat. Our total came out to be around 63.00 dollars for 5 people ( around 12.00 dollars per person) This is a pretty good deal considering you can drink and eat all you want.

I also had a budget for purchasing decorations to set up the house. Six months ago we upgraded our living space and moved from an apartment to living in a house. (the unfortunate part is that many of our Christmas things where probably thrown away due to the fact that they where in a brown bags and my husband mistakenly thinking it was trash). No worries. I bought my Christmas tree from Biglots and I did my shopping at the 99 cent store for Christmas. This came out to be approx 90 bucks. Including all of the fixing for the tree and other things around the house.

Far as the gifts, I let my husband be in charge of that department. Limiting the gifts to one or two ticket items (mp3 player and a gift certificate for my daughter and two Ninendo DS units and a couple of games for the boys) was a winner because we didn’t feel the we had to fill the space under the Christmas tree with gifts. Everyone seem to be very happy with what they got for Christmas. These items actually where added to be under our budget ( around $700.00 or so) Oh, I also got my husband a wonderful gift certificate to his favorite restaurant and I he got me a digital camera.

Overall, I think that having a budget and sharing the responsibilities with my husband did help in regards to lessening the stress that Christmas can bring during the year. I think that keeping the objective of Christmas as a day for spending time with family, no matter how, is the way it should be.

Remember to keep it positive and live in the moment.