Say, Have You Seen My Christmas Spirit?

How many days is it now?  Christmas is two weeks from Saturday!   I am completely unprepared.  As I wrote in a previous post A Preowned Christmas , my plan for this Holiday Season was to purchase items that were made from repurposed items, bake some gifts, and check out ebay and resale shops for great deals on new to me stuff.  Great idea, right?  Turns out it's a bit harder than I imagined, and really if I want to do Christmas that way, I should have started looking for presents back in oh say, June. 

Maybe it is the lack of shopping, and my skipping of Black Friday that has stymied my Christmas Spirit.  Maybe it is because the weather has been 'too' warm for December (but great weather for running!).  Maybe it is because I have been busy doing craft fairs, ladies nights and open houses selling Tastefully Simple and this has cut down on my Lifetime Holiday Movie watching.  I imagine you are thinking what I am thinking: D, All of the Above.   Yep, that sounds about right.

 Of course the big Scrooge event of December first did not help at all.  That is the day that my husband's corporate job was lost in end of the year downsizing.  He is very positive about the future, but I have been freaking out.  Given that it has been a week, I've decided the time to freak out needs to end. Time to build a bridge and get over it. We've got some things going for us. First, I'm my own boss, so I already had a talk and requested extra hours from myself . Secondly, I can take advantage of health insurance offered through Tastefully Simple.  Lastly, the kids only want three things each for Christmas, which is very doable, and I was quite relieved that no one is looking for a new gaming system.

That settles it, we will decorate the tree this weekend, make some Christmas cookies and watch Christmas Vacation, a surefire recipe for Christmas spirit finding.

My Christmas Mission: Operation Preowned Xmas

I've been mulling something over, and I am ready to commit.  As you all know, I'm like super green.  Neon Green, so green the Sierra Club calls me for advice on how to reduce their carbon footprint.  In all fairness though, my greenness is, in a large part, due to a lack of green backs!

What I have decided to do, as part of my green initiative, is not purchase anything new for Christmas.  Everything we give this year will be preowned/used/swapped for/crafted. I will be going to resale shops, hanging on etsy, ebay, paperback swap, thredup and so forth.   To keep me on track and on target, I am setting down some for my challenge and will post updates and picks on how it goes. 

What about the people I give gifts to this year?  How are they going to take getting someone else's treasures as a gift?  Good point.  On my side of the family, they won't mind--they are all pretty crunchy. My kids?  To be honest, let's see if they notice!  The man?  really he shouldn't get any gifts anyway as he has a well documented history of buying everything he wants and then asking me to return whatever I get him. For everyone else, I will have to make sure to put more time and effort into picking a gift than I would normally and that is why this is a challenge, right?  Can't make it too easy.

Rules:
1. Buy no new stuff for Christmas.  Would something NIB purchased off Ebay be OK?  I say yes because it isn't new from the store.  It is still preowned.
2. What about crafts?  If it is a craft that is primarily re purposed then yes it is OK.
3. What about making a craft?  Same as purchasing a complete craft.
4. What about like giving cookies?  This is a great question, I am going to say that if I am making cookies to send to school or b/cause I am going somewhere this isn't a 'gift' and doesn't count.

Am I missing anything?  Let me know!  Do you know of a great resale shop?  Brick & Mortar or Virtual?  LMK!

The hardest part will be not doing Black Friday.  Oh I am so going to miss BF this year.  :-(