DH ordered his mother's gift today and got free shipping from B&N website. It came to $39.95. His father will be getting a $40 gift card to Lowe's. My FIL is notoriously hard to shop for. He should be easy. He collects nutcrackers, but every year he goes out and buys them for himself, so even if you've perused his collection and then go to look for something unique, he's already bought it and just not put it up. Extremely frustrating. So we're not even going to try this year. And FIL will definitely use the Lowe's card.

I also ordered my Christmas present, a hard ice cream machine. I'm down to one brand of ice cream that DS and I can eat due to recent ingredient changes, and Haagan Daas is expensive. It's got a built in refrigeration unit and makes 1.6 quarts at a time. It cost $250.93 and I got free shipping. This also counts as my birthday present in February. I just combined the two budgets together. There's just not that much that I want or have space for. And if there was I have $154 of my allowance saved.

We still need to buy Christmas presents for our 2 nieces on DH's side. He's getting an updated list from his sister today. We will be doing the same thing as we did last year for his sister, getting her a $200 Target gift card.

$200 seems like a lot for one person outside the immediate family (actually, it's a lot for a person inside the immediate family, too!), but SIL has struggled mightily since divorcing her cheating ex-husband and getting custody of both girls a few years back. She works a minimum wage job and is on food stamps.

The Target card allows her to get toiletries, socks, underwear, shoes, school supplies, or other needed items, but also groceries when the food stamps are not enough. This helps her to get by easier and last year she stretched it out for several months. We ususally fill her car with gas a couple times a year, too. You have to help your own when you can.

Hopefully tomorrow we can pick up the gift cards and the presents for the girls and something token for my mother (who does not want to exchange gifts but still manages to do something token every year) and be done with it. We'll need to get our wrapping paper and bows out of storage and buy some cellophane tape. We still need to set up and decorate our little 2 foot tall tree. We don't have room for a full-sized tree in our area, but we like to have a little something.

I also need to do a photo shoot with DS. Since he is being homeschooled this year, there were no school photos done of him. I can do as good a job with him as they do, I just need to get to it, so that I can print out photos of him to go with DD's for giving to relatives. We need to pick up ink and photo paper, though. I am hoping to make a trip to Costco tomorrow and can pick up the ink there. Photo paper is cheaper at the office store next door to Costco and also has much smaller quantities, so we'll get that there.

I have almost all the food for our own day at home. We have the turkey we didn't make at Thanksgiving due to illness in the freezer. I have plenty of potatoes from what we harvested this year. I have green beans and corn. I have butter and poultry seasoning. I just need to make the bread for the stuffing the day before our meal. We may need to buy milk as well.

We will probably make our meal on the 23rd. It will be the four of us and Mom, and I will probably invite the Ice Queen as well. I really should come up with an alternate name for eldest sister as since she's come back into the family fold she's thawed quite a bit.

The Social Butterfly stopped by yesterday. I haven't seen her in over a year. I've seen my nephews and my BIL, but not my sister. We visited for an hour and then they were off. They won't be coming down for Christmas at all this year and I probably won't see her again for a year. She doesn't really like family to come visit her, especially during the holidays. Oh, well, at least I got to see her.

I can't believe the year is almost over. 2012 has gone by so fast. I am looking forward to January and the feeling of having a fresh start that that always seems to bring.