How many days till Christmas 2015 then.............?

[70isaLimitNotaTarget]

Brace yourselves and form an orderly queue.

XMas clock.com says 357 (plus 14 hours)

Happy New Year to one and all. Hope 2015 is a good one

I may of put lots of lovely Lidl christmas food in my trolley yesterday!! And its due to get snowy this weekend Yipee Christmas is on its way. So excited

Lots of Yankee Candles starting to appear now, and Christmas sections starting to open up in various shops.

M&S is very late to get started this year though....well, apart from the food section. But they only have the classic red mince pies yet, I am waiting for the gold ones before I break!

Am not looking at Christmas food yet. If I have it in the house I'll eat it!

I am hiding the Christmas food from myself in the hope that I will forget I have it. Some of it is for a hamper for my parents, so I might need to check quality....

61

And two months till Christmas Eve.
I bought some Stocking Gifts for my DD .

Watched QVC (Christmas Tree was the Todays Special Value but mine will survive another few years I reckon)

Still focused on our upcoming holiday to truly devote myself to Xmas, thought I did just order a cute little elf door for our EotS. Have a few gifts too for the DC, including matching Xmas socks - not found a lot of matchy stuff for boy-girl siblings, I wouldn't inflict it on them often, but occasionally it's cute!
Two months til Xmas Eve feels like no time at all!!!

Yum and yum - ordered these a couple of weeks ago, along with non-Xmassy ones - not tried these yet, but assume they are yummy as the ones I used on DS's birthday cakes were amazing.

60

Clocks changed
Hallowe'en next week
Gut Fawkes
My DS birthdat (No he's not old enough -yet)

Now we start in earnest.
The search continues for The Christmas Jumper
Starting to buy Stocking Fillers for my DD

And deciding menus

Tesco have Christmas jumpers...am going to buy a few!!

TWO MONTHS!!!!!

Hoping to get into town this week to have a look about for Xmas stuff. We do four gifts from Santa (want, need, wear, read); I have the latter two sorted for both kidlets, just need the want and need, which are hard as neither need or want anything really. Then a gift or three from DH and me, plus stocking fillers. I've been collecting a few stocking fillers for myself (I do a stocking for DH and myself, otherwise DS would wonder why Santa left us out), not got much for DH yet. We are trying to be more minimal with our possessions, but stuff we will use anyway is a winner.

TWO MONTHS!!!!!

59[santa]

58. Very quiet today. Everyone must be busy with Christmas prep!

Ah, only Christmas Prep on paper
I was at work Mon/Tues but off the rest of the week.
Planning to tidy (yawn), got various appointments, for DC and myself.

DD wants her Christmas bedding on Nov 1st.

Still looking for the Christmas Jumper.

57

We have made 3 decisions.
One - we WILL spend Christmas "down home" with our respective parents, which does include both Christmas turkey lunch and Christmas turkey dinner on 25th.
Two - we will contemplate staying in my parents house for our visit (almost unheard of).
Three - we will return to our own home, and more than likely not travel for New Years, as we NEED a few days of quiet downtime on our own this year.

I have a couple of more bits bought, and DD identified the onsie she'd really LURVE for Christmas Eve. And earned it (we were bribing her to make SURE of 1 thing, for someone else's benefit, and she did, so we will gulp and pay the £££!).

Need to decorate for Halloween this week though - DD and I are staying at home, although DH is travelling.

56

We're in Full Hallowe'en Mode here - getting my decorations sorted.

I had a successful day's shopping yesterday. Helped by going through the presents picked up during this year (thank you bargain thread) and have now started ticking people off my list. [santa]

Which onesie, Biddy? Hope you are feeling at peace with your decisions. (1, 2 and 3; not the onesie splurge!)

CC, what is that at the end of your post?!

Still feeling stuck for what to get 5yo DS. And baby DD, for that matter. She already has enough hand-me-down toys really.

54

Hallowe'en

[santa]is the only Christmas smiley on my iPad.

53 Full on Christmas countdown now, the Halloween stuff goes back in the loft and the Christmas ones come down for checking and sorting. 1st December they go up. So so so excited.

Into November so I can seriously start looking at Christmas things without DH going at me.
Well, he still will go but I'll ignore him. He knows my Christmas planning will enable a smooth flowing Christmas.

I know 70. At this point I can be open about thinking about and planning for Christmas and be seen as organised rather obsessive[santa]

I'm starting the Christmas blitz.... lounge has been decorated (re-painted, not tree up sort of decorated!) scrubbed top to bottom and is shining like a new pin. All of the gubbins that has collected in there over the last few months has been binned and the rest will be put back this week.

Then I'll go through the house room by room so it's done by 1st December at which point I will start to decorate the house!!

I love this time of preparation and build up.

Good plan paper. I am planning to deep clean and thoroughly tidy two rooms each weekend in the run up to Advent.

Ornamental It's the Rudolph reindeer one (in the boys section) in Debenhams. We picked it up yesterday. It's lovely, just more than twice what we normally pay for PJs. But we are spending a lot on DD at the moment, partly in guilt about things she's missing and how well she is dealing with all our travels and the atmosphere in DGPs house. I don't think her Lego Minifigures collection has ever been growing so fast!!

I am paring back my plans. Being realistic about what I can achieve. So I may get some more deep cleaning done, but I am happy I was ahead of schedule on a few rooms. Fake tree and probably minimal deocrations. No turkey meal (travelling so DPs and DMIL turkeys instead - 1 for lunch and 1 for dinner - even DD groaned and said straightaway when she heard we were travelling that it was going to be "a 2 dinners Christmas"!!) I'll figure out what to do about cards in a couple of weeks time.

But I am still holding on to the peace and enjoyment bits.