method for surviving holiday chaos: cute trees with light and also chocolate beer.
I recently learned that Turtle and I had a slightly different perspective on gifts this season. It is worth noting that our birthdays are as immediately after Christmas as they can be without being on the 26th: mine is December 27th and hers is December 28th. This means we either lump all our gifts together or spend more money than we basically ever spend on ourselves, ever. Or we decide to not buy each other gifts and to just enjoy 1. each other’s fabulous company, and 2. not being poor. Well, it turns out I thought we had chosen the latter, and she thought we had chosen the former. In other words, I thought we weren’t buying gifts, and she thought our budget was $200. Each.
Oops.
Okay, Turtle, how about I wrap this puppy in Christmas lights and she can be your present?
Okay, if I really got her another puppy for Christmas, the whole thing would look sort of like this:
Now, I am off to purchase cute and meaningful things for my wife! (The plus side of all of this is that we spend an entire year pinching our pennies and then we get to buy pretty things for our favorite people. Not a shabby deal, folks.)
Do you and your partner agree on gift giving procedure? Anyone else with a birthday or two smashed right up against the holidays? Tell me all your secrets to calm and happy holidays!!
We tend to buy things when we need (or want) them, as long as we can fit them into our budget. Because we splurged for a nice camera last month, we’ll probably skip the Christmas gifts for each other.
Hm… Now that I think about it, I should probably ask my spouse to make sure…
Haha, yes, you should! I love the new pictures from your camera by the way… definitely a worthwhile purchase.
You guys are always too funny! I guess we’re like RebelWerewolf too where gifts haven’t really been big for us, and we just get things as we need them. And I know this makes us sound like the most not fun people ever, but after doing a lot of decluttering and realizing we were holding onto things because people gave them to us and we didn’t really have room in our home, we kind of play it low and hope we don’t get gifts. Or we give people gift cards. What did you do growing up with your birthday so close to Christmas? Was it a good or bad thing to have as a kid?
I think it was a good thing… all the far away relatives remembered my birthday and sent extra gifts. Now it’s expensive, but we get a break for the rest of the year, I guess. This year we are going away for our birthdays as a gift, so I’m pretty excited about that.
We usually have a mutually agreed upon budget ($100ish each) to spend on each other. This year that budget is $0 because the tickets for our vacation (even with using air miles!!) were a weeeeeee bit more than $200. Also, I LOVE pictures of people and animals I adore wrapped in bright lights! Good stuff.
So fun!! Enjoy your trip
My girlfriend’s birthday is in November, so not nearly as close to the holidays as yours, but close enough that I give her the option of two smaller gifts or one larger for the two.
The most exhausting holiday/birthday smash-up in my family is my brother and sister-in-law’s anniversary, my sister-in-law’s birthday, and valentine’s day are all within a week of each other. My brother usually just takes her to one nice dinner or a getaway to celebrate all three.
Wow, that’s intense! This year I got Turtle two things, one for each holiday… I’m never sure about one big thing or a few little things, so we’ll see
Hey Bird,
I am with you, but my birthday is actually Dec 26th. As a kid I hated getting one Christmas-slash-Birthday present, or worse, getting Christmas ornaments as my birthday present. I actually care more about getting a birthday present than a Christmas one, so we just focus on birthdays.