Holiday Shopping

One of the many pitfalls along the path of losing one's mind is the annual holiday shopping.  I used to be able to keep exhaustive lists of each recipient in my head along with a running tally of about how much I'd spent on each.  I've never been so organized as to have a monetary cap that I tried to stay under, however.  This is a *fantastic* idea that hadn't occurred to me until now.  I've always just tried REALLY hard to keep costs down, make what I could manage (read: stay up all night sewing the day before the last day of ensured delivery at the P.O., or aforementioned recipients will be opening said gifts), and prayed for the best.  I have a round figure for what the big gift Santa leaves will cost and about how much a few smaller ones will cost for each kid.  Now that we are up to 3 kids, and my brain is slowly leaving the building, I need to get organized.  I've already ordered and received packages, hidden them, and CAN'T FIND THEM.  I received this in my in-box today.  It is a HOLIDAY. BUDGET.  It is from Google docs, so it is clunky and there are no totals or anything. I *do* know how to use the sum function, and I *could* put it in myself, but instead I opened my trusty Excel, scanned through the loaded templates and found this:

 

here it is bigger (NOT my numbers):

It is a COMPLETED spreadsheet!  We aren't going anywhere for Christmas, so there is actually MORE information than I need.  And doesn't everyone have BOXES of wrapping and lovely tags left over from over shopping the sales last year?  More zeros for my budget!!  I'm a little giddy.  And I haven't even put any of our info in yet!  You should *totally* check out YOUR Excel spreadsheets, or click here, and make holiday budgets.  I'm going to.  As soon as I can find that damn box of presents that is hidden somewhere in this house!!