Christmas is coming the MamaUndone is getting fat...

Phew.  Finally a rather small yet all the same much needed sigh of relief, a small dent has been made in the catastrophic event known as Christmas Shopping.  All three of The Spawns 'main' presents have arrived and indeed some of the smaller ones too, ditto to The Husbands presents.  I was slightly too complacent as 'oh it's only October' and then 'relax, it's only November' which has vastly been replaced with 'oh fuckity fuck fuck, it's nearly bloody December' yet with strategic financial planning with military precision due to limited funds it's more a case of buy as soon as you have the money before it disappears on dreadfully boring things like you know..food.  There seems to be two parenting camps when it comes to Christmas, those who successfully employ a modest gift affair rife with meaning and appreciation and then there's us, I confess to going somewhat bananas at Christmas and no that's not to say i'm yellow.   Birthdays and Christmas are the only times when we can do this, it's not like we have holidays or even a car to go places in and we're not religious so for us shallow heathens it really rather is all about the glitter, gluttony and yes...presents at least for the kids for Christmas with The Party Of Five is all about The Spawn.

Even better is the fact that so far, I've barley had to leave the sanctuary of home to do it which society should be dreadfully grateful for, what with my intense loathing of well..people really.  In my old age shopping really isn't fun unless it's done online.  Gone are the days when I reveled in languishing around shops all day at leisure  now it is something to be endured and survive.  I think I've been infected with blokeism, it's okay though my balls aren't hairy.

So with an Amazon shopping list as long as my arm ready to be checked out as soon as I forage and gather more pennies and pesky stocking fillers to be purchased things are so far going smoothly, although no doubt i've jinxed myself by that statement alone.

I'll admit to being terrifically chuffed that I managed to source the bargain wooden market stall by Asda that all stores appear to be unsurprisingly out of stock of and the Asda Direct website have now erased it from their site through a local company that sell on undelivered Asda stock.  We originally went to purchase some bargain toy wrestlers for Thing One and a new doll house for  Thing Two and whilst chatting to the utterly delightful staff I mentioned my woe at the mission impossible of locating the wooden market stall and they said they were expecting some and would save one for us!  How absolutely terrific! True to their word they phoned later in the day and we are collecting one tomorrow.  It is highly probable that my excitement over it will readily surpass that of The Toddler who it is destined for.

So that just leaves the wider family to buy for.  I'm still decidedly torn between hash up hampers of random bought goods or novelty items seeing as our budget is forever low.  As an alternative to 5-10 scratchcards in a Christmas card I've been scouting out other novel 'money' gifts and have been toying over Bingo credit at somewhere like Iceland Bingo.  There is such a minefield of Bingo sites out there it would appear that every company under the sun also have a bingo site, i'll admit to being frightfully bewildered by it all seeing as the last time I played bingo was at my great aunts house , obviously before they died ...though I feel necro-bingo could be going to the Dragons Den soon, you heard it here first.  Oh and I was one of those horrible pesky things, you know, a child.  So, what would you think if someone gave you a gift of some credit for a bingo site? funky and fun or shamefully obscure in a bad way?  Maybe I should just stick to a bottle of plonk and a box of chocolates and be abysmally predictable.

All this planning is awfully exhausting is it vodka o'clock yet?