Sneaky little bugger!

Every single year, as much as I try and plan to not be caught off guard, Christmas and the holiday season seems to sneak up on me. I'm not sure how they always manage to do that. It's not like I don't see them coming. You'd think that stores getting their Christmas decorations up in August and September might get the pressure started. Or maybe Black Friday. But no. Here I am, two weeks away from Christmas, no cards sent and still the bulk of my shopping to go.

This year especially, I had the best of intentions. I actually bought my first Christmas present in August. I had atleast a little something for everyone on my list by October. I had planned to pay cash for everything and spread the shopping out over a few months so that I could do that. I hate credit cards. Ok, so maybe hate is too strong of a word, I do like the instant gratification of just charging it instead of waiting to have cash, but making those payments every month is very annoying. That money could be going in savings for our fence or barn or arena or tack room. Instead of paying on credit cards that I hardly remember what the charges were for. But here we are, December 9th already (holy crap!) and I've only got one person on my list done. That was the gift I bought in August and the other part is a requested re-gift, so I'm not sure it even counts.

I don't even have my Christmas decorations up yet. I'm such a slacker! I did manage to get them down from storage last week, but they've been parked in the dungeon (our extra bedroom that we never use and has turned into the "catch all" room for all the crap I don't want to deal with) since then. I suppose I do have excuses. Plenty of excuses. Though none of them are great and they don't help the fact that Christmas is getting close and I still have a ton to do. I have had some big projects that were actually productive that cut into my Chritmas prep time: I painted my kitchen, I hosted Thanksgiving, I've been riding my horse and had a couple shows. I know the main thing that has disctracted me from absolutely everything has been Twilight, but I love it too much to use that as an excuse. Plus, it's not a great excuse. It just shows that I have no self control and really screwed up priorities. And I'm ok with that.

I need to find my Christmas cd's (packed away in some random box when we moved that I figured I'd for sure have unpacked by the time Christmas rolled around, hahaha) and really get going on the Christmas spirit! I did get everything that I need to make fudge and my favorite Christmas cookies last weekend, but I ended up spending most of the weekend reading instead. D'oh!

I'm hoping to get in the Christmas spirit at some point this week. I'm looking forward to a really great date night with some friends tomorrow night that includes a Christmas craft project so I'm hoping that'll get it started! Then I can sail into the weekend humming Christmas tunes and get my decorating, shopping, cards and tree all done and some baking started! A girl can dream, right?