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A Christmas Day Update

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The past four days have gone by too fast. Tomorrow, it is back to work. But I feel so much better after having some time off and having some time with my husband and son.

My son and I baked cookies, although we made sugar cookie dough on Sunday and we were going to bake them on Monday. That didn’t happen because the saran wrap around the dough wasn’t quite sealed tightly enough and the dough hardened. Luck have it, we had a friend over Christmas Eve night and his mom insisted that he brought over…sugar cookies 🙂

I’m not sure if anything else can beat the pure amazement of a child on Christmas day. His eyes widened at a few of his presents and he ended up playing with almost all of them today. Sometimes I wish I could bottle up that excitement and innocense. I think that is the reason I tend to go overboard with Christmas. It’s for that genuine reaction.

Santa was very practical with some gifts, and my son was happy to receive them as well. I thought for sure he’d frown when he saw that Santa brought him underware, but he was pretty happy. Perhaps that is because my son was very practical with the presents he picked out for mom and dad.

Mom received a little back massager and a small mirror. He remembered that I thought the massager felt good the one time we tried it in the store and that is what he picked out. As for the mirror, I am always losing mine so he bought me another one.

Dad received a pillow and a blanket. He often sits on our free couch and asks for a blanket to use to help pad the area next to the wood arm of the couch. Without any prodding, my son came up with the idea to get dad a pillow for the couch (we don’t have any pillows for our couches). Then, he decided to get a blanket that matched.

I have to admit that I am pretty proud of his choices. I thought for sure mom and dad would end up with toys 🙂

Pretty soon we will take down our Christmas decorations and before we know it another year will have passed. Time is going by too fast. Time to kick up our debt reduction a notch or two to get out of debt sooner than later.

With that, it’s time for me to take a look at our finances and see how much we can put towards our debt right now. I was going to wait until closer to the end of the month, but I better do it now so there is no temptation with the after-Christmas sales (although I will shop them to get some cheap wrapping paper and Christmas cards for next year).

An iPod Giveaway, Networking and a Frugal Christmas

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I’m pretty happy about Friday this week. I don’t have to go back to work until Wednesday and I was offered an official writing gig (more on that later). I could use a little R&R with time off to relax a bit and catch up with blog-related items. And of course, I can always use some extra cash from the writing gig 😉

Now here’s some articles that caught my eye this week:

Bob at Christain PF has a giveaway for an iPod Nano. Hurry! The deadline is 11:59 CST on Dec. 24. (He’s also giving away YNAB Budgeting Software too!)

Mapgirl discusses internal networking and how it might lead to new opportunities. Very interesting – I’ve never thought of it like that.

Plonkee has some tips on how to celebrate a frugal Christmas. Something we do yearly is drive around and look at Christmas lights.

Enjoy!