The stockings are hung by the fire with care

With all the gift buying and giving that this season brings, we find it a little silly to purchase gifts for each other on top of it all.  Not that we don’t want to show  our love and thoughtfulness through gifts, but we’d like to think we do that year round!  For our first Christmas together we weren’t going to do gifts for each other at all, but after strange looks from co-workers and scrooge-like guilt, we decided to exchange gifts in some capacity.  Since we were working on Baby Step #2 (our “debt snowball”), we didn’t want to spend much on each other.

Our solution was to fill each other’s stockings with “odds and ends”-type gifts.  The stockings are handmade by my mom and have always been a special Christmas decoration around the house.  Since we’re past the days of our parents filling our stockings, we decided to do it ourselves.  For the month of December, Andrew and I forfeit our fun money from the budget to buy each other’s gifts.  That way, I don’t feel like I’m paying for my own present but instead know that Andrew had to sacrifice his apps and Taco Bell runs to buy something special for me .

So what kinds of things do we fill the stockings with?  Last year they were filled with things like Burt’s Bees Chapstick, Every Man Jack Face Lotion, popcorn seasoning, our favorite SET card game, and gum.  Nothing too extravagant—just little things that say “I thought you might like nacho-flavored popcorn.”  And this year’s stockings?  I can’t tell you that!  We’ll have to wait and see…

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Want to see our official stockings?  They’re right here!