Christmas Shopping Online

The older my kids get the harder it is to buy Christmas presents for them secretively. We used to be able to throw things in the cart unnoticed but now they notice every tiny thing I put in there! In order to keep the magic of Santa alive it has become increasingly necessary to come up with other methods to get my shopping done.

Two years ago I did all of my Santa Claus shopping online. I always like to get my shopping done early and since we had an impending move at Thanksgiving and I had a husband who moved right after Halloween, it was also my only choice as I knew we would be homeless for the next month.. If you are interested in doing your shopping online here is how I went about it. This method will also work for normal Christmas shopping as well.

First: Make a list of all the items you wish to purchase for each child. If you are on a budget, include that in your list as well.

Second: Decide which stores you will be shopping at and stick to those stores only. If you let yourself get sidetracked by every online store that carries your toy it'll quickly become overwhelming. The stores I used were: Target, Wal-Mart, ToysRUs, KB Toys, Kmart, and Amazon.

Third: Now comes the tedious part! When you can find time, visit each of the sites, find the toys your are looking for, and record their prices. If you are fluent in Excel this could easily be turned into a spread sheet. If you are Excel-illiterate like me then just stick to a Word document.

Fourth: Take notice of which stores offer free shipping or other deals and shop accordingly. Amazon has free shipping on orders over $25 but you have to purchase items directly from them or through a vendor that participates in their shipping policies.

Here's an Example of what your list could look like:

Aftyn:
My Little Pony RC Scootaloo on the Go!
Wal-Mart: $19.97
Toys R Us: $20.99
Amazon: $19.99
KB Toys: $27.99


Fur Real Friends
Wal-Mart: $12.97 (Pig)
Toys R Us: $13.99 (Panda)
Amazon: $13.95 (Honey Bear)
Kmart: $14.99 (Dalmatian)
KB Toys: 14.99 (Dalmatian)

Things I learned:

• Wal-Mart always had the lowest price on toys HOWEVER they rarely had exactly what I was looking for. Kmart was the same way. On a good note Wal-Mart offers free shipping to their stores on many of their items. All you have to do is go and pick up your stuff.
• I figured that ToysRUs would always be the most expensive but I was pleasantly surprised by how close they were to Wal-Mart.
• KB Toys was consistently the most expensive EXCEPT for they had the exact push car I wanted to buy for Gavin for about 15 dollars cheaper than anyone else so you just never know!
• Although Target seemed liked a great place to look for toys it was very disappointing in its selection and I ended up elliminating them from my list.

So which store did I end up buying the majority of my presents from? Amazon. Even though they weren't the cheapest venue they do offer free shipping. After calculating all of the shipping costs into my purchases Amazon was the cheapest route by enough to convince me. Happy shopping!

Love Your Linen Closet

Here's what my linen closet looked like before-piles of barely folded sheets, mismatched, and unorganized.

 I am fortunate enough to have oodles of storage in my house. Whoever built it must've had something in common with me because I love to have a place for everything. I have two linen closets (actually three if you count the tiny one tucked in my girls' bathroom) which enables me to have one closet just for towels and one just for bedding.

The bedding closet has proven to be a big pain for me. I've never been able to keep it looking neat and it's been a big trial to keep everything from getting mixed up. This is mainly due to a certain husband (who shall remain nameless) who just grabs random sheets in the middle of the night if one of the kids has an accident. I LOVE that he is willing to help me out in the middle of the night but didn't like that everything was getting mixed up, or that the kids would end up with queen-sized sheets on their bed which I'd have to go back and replace and end up having to wash yet another sheet set. It just wasn't working for me so... I decided to change it!

Ahhh, so much better!

I found these super cute Martha Stewart fabric drawers at Home Depot in the organization section. They cost me $7 each which I didn't think was too bad. I then got to work.

1. First, I went through all the sheet sets I had and got rid of the ones that I didn't need.
2. Then, I separated them by person.
3. I kept only three sets of sheets for my kids (two cotton sets and one flannel). Nathan and I have two cotton and two flannel sets.
4. I placed each person's sheets in their drawer and labeled it with their name.
5. I also reserved one drawer for throws and one for guest sheets.
6. I folded all of the extra kid quilts and put them on a shelf.
7. Finally, I folded all of the guest quilts and put them on the floor of the closet since they are bigger.

The end result is so nice! Not only does it look great but now Nathan, oops, I mean that person who shall remain nameless, and I can find exactly what we need in the middle of the night.

If you don't have as much space to do this as I do, no worries. Clear out some space in each person's closet and put their sheet drawer there instead. The drawers are relatively compact so you don't need much space at all! Have at it!

Winterize Bedrooms

I don't know about where you live but here at my house fall seems to have finally arrived. The air is crisp and chilly now and the nights have gotten cool enough that our furnace has kicked on a couple of times. This weekend I took the time to winterize my kids' bedrooms. It's a tedious task I must say but alas it has to be done and there's no time like the present, right? Here's how I went about it:

1. Prepare beds for winter. Take off all bedding and wash it with hot water and bleach if possible. This kills any bacteria and dust mites. Replace summer sheets with flannel sheets, add an extra quilt, and remake beds.
2. Open up windows to air out one last time before it's too cold to do so.
3. Replace summer pajamas with winter ones in drawers. Determine which are too small and which still fit from last year. Put summer p.j.'s in flat plastic boxes and slide under beds.
4. Replace summer clothes with winter clothes and again determine which still fit and which don't. Store summer clothing in flat boxes and slide under beds.
5. Finally have your kids try on their jackets and winter shoes to see if they still fit from last year.

Winterizing is not so much fun I must say but it's a relief to have it done and I've been able to make a big check mark on my never-ending to-do-list. Try and get yours done this week too!