The spending is over!!!

Christmas table runner complete.

What a crappy photo, maybe if I have the time I will try to get a better picture tomorrow, it's hard to make out how cute this turned out since our table is black and it's 11:00PM! The free motion quilting took forever on this thing, black thread on black material is pretty hard to see, in addition for some dumb reason I did little bitty tiny swirl quilting. The quilting is the best I have ever done but a crazy amount of time went into it. In the next week or two it along with all the other handmade Christmas gifts will be headed to the post office!!! So thankful that I forced myself to work over the summer on Christmas gifts, I could never pull it all off if I would have waited until December this year.

I was able to finish ALL of the Christmas shopping today, even had time to return home organize the rest of the family sewing gifts to see what additional notions I will need and back out I went to pick everything up. I can now put my feet up and enjoy the Christmas season!!! We did come under budget but by the hair of our chinny chin chin. Shopping the sales during the year was key to keeping the cost down. I don't bother buying clothing for anyone, it's gift cards from shoe stores, fav department or clothing stores and a few to some discount stores. This gets me off the hook for disappointed big kids (wrong size, color, style) and they can purchase twice as much shopping the after Christmas or New Years sales.

When I returned home for the night I had a message from our bank to call ASAP due to a fraud alert on our account due to unusual activity. After speaking to the rep and assuring her we made all the purchases she ask if she could be adopted, HA, not likely sweetheart we have more than we can afford already. I rarely use a debit card, it's cash only around here, when the cash runs out it's time to head home. Christmas is the exception to that rule, I'm not comfortable carrying a lot of cash around so the debit card gets a good workout. I feel like a free woman now that the shopping is done, instead of laying out $$ the month of December we will be tucking some cash in the savings account.