It's beginning to look a lot like.....panic.

Forgive me for I have journal sinned, again.  For you see I didn't mean to neglect you so, my phone ate all my pictures, the Blogger app ate all my draft posts I was working on and i'm been generally wallowing in abject misery and pain.  Dramatic, moi?

I've also been somewhat burying my head in the proverbial sand with the fastly approaching Christmas.  I've seemingly spent rather too much time protesting with ever increasing venom that 'it's only October'  Followed by 'but it's only November' and am now at that exceedingly unfortunate moment where my inner audience is aghast because 'fuck, it's November.....I have so much shopping to do.  Oh shit'

Now The Toddler and Thing Two are somewhat easy to buy for however The Husband (he who only wants T-shirts, band T-shirts to be exact, to add to the bin bag fulls he already has, many of them possibly older then me) and Thing One (who has an innate inability to actually play with toys) are rather awkward or should I say bloody difficult to buy for.  Only it doesn't end there for we then have The Parents to buy for to and our flids (brothers to the southerners amongst you) oh and two nephews too.  Did I mention that The Husband will be flying to faraway lands, twice, in December leaving me alone with all three of The Spawn and The Mothership et al are buggering off to Spain, again so will need their gifts early. Damn, blast bugger and Arse. Now I have a headache, again.  I think I may need to lay down.

I do go through momentary lapses in sanity when I come up with the rather twee notion of hampers filled with rather scrummy home made treats and then I get whacked around the head with a good hard old dose of cold reality seeing as i'm neither patient nor have the excess cash to experiment in this arena.  Somehow I don't think a hamper filled with Blue Nun, Morrisons value Christmas pud and a Mars Bar would quite cut it. Besides, the bloody baskets would take up most of my meager budget.  My intentions are good though, I even got so far as browsing through my Nigella book but got distracted by cake.

For The Mothership et al I tend to stick to novelty gifts or gadgets (okay okay....and bloody gift vouchers, so sue my unoriginality)  Our flid is a snob and a tech geek, but hey we all have our problems.  I then find a quirky gadget like this which would  be perfect until I remember my family don't actually tend to 'leave' any wine once the bottle is open and besides, it's rather over budget.  Bother.  Back to the drawing board.  Yet then I get all distracted (doesn't take much..believe me) at remote controlled candles because they're funky and *I* would like them or squeeeee! because I Thing Two would simply adore it and then I remember that Thing Two is about as likely to believe in Faeries as The Dog is and besides, I have a list as long as my arm of things to buy her that may now have one of the firefly in a jar things because lets face it, she can't deny the existence of fireflies added to it. Whaa?  This really isn't helping buy the gifts I do need.  Did I mention I believe in Faeries? (Hint.  Hint)  I guess the Voodoo knife block  is probably more up Thing Two's street though, yes I know she's six.

All this shopping is making me thirsty, which reminds me The Husband also likes alcohol (you know as well as T-Shirts) which is uncanny because I'm rather sure it was alcohol that made me marry him, and alcohol that stops him frequently filing for divorce.  However he's not a cherry Lambrini man and prefers the higher budget things like Jagermeister (yes, I did have to Google it to spell it, I never claimed to be an intellectual.  by and by though what a spooktastic site design!) and Benedictine (with it's rather nifty bottle)  In the early days Aldi used to do a frightfully scrummy chocolate liqueur at an incredibly decent price that he would merrily sup but alas they haven't stocked it in many years now.  Gits.

I do however have a few ideas up my sleeve for my bearded rock star of a Husband (you know, as well as a lifetime supply of razors)

I do occasionally have the vague notion of attempting home made Mars Bar vodka or Home Made Baileys yet never seem to get past the notion and towards the actual recipe finding.

So here I am wasting more time writing about what I need to do and not actually doing it.  I'll do most of my shopping online seeing as in my old age i've come to loathe actual shopping, mainly due to the excess of people, generally stupid people at that which only serve to feed my homicidal tendancies.

Christmas shopping is terribly exhausting and i'm still at the planning stage.  Ideally i'm attempting to stick to the least amount of shops as possible, so far Amazon (because I have a free Prime trial), Smyths Toys (because I get cashback, kerching!) Gizoo (purely because it's full of my kind of gifts) and Home Bargains (because well, i'm cheap skint)

I'm going for a nap.  Over exertion won't help anyone.

No doubt this will be continued.