What we Spent on Christmas

I'll start off with a disclaimer my husband gave me full permission to give: all the expensive things are his fault. He had some very specific items he wanted to purchase, so our Christmas budget was a little heavier than I would have normally cared for (for reference, here was our budget for 2021 and 2022), but hey, I make my family suffer through a lot of frugal decisions, so I'll let this slide.

---

Most of my daughter's gifts were acquired at the Swap Shop (free), given to us as hand-me-downs (free), or at Goodwill.

---

Most of my son's were also collected from the Swap Shop, given as hand-me-downs, or found at Goodwill/Lots for Tots.

​My daughter had one solitary item on her wish list this year, and that was this GIGANTIC, discontinued, originally $250 LOL Ski Chalet. It is intense. And, of course, the only thing she has wanted for months.  Since you can't even buy it anymore (and I 100% would NOT at $250), I scoured Facebook Marketplace and, like a Christmas miracle, this pristine puppy popped up. Shout out to my dad who took on the massive undertaking of driving several hours to transport it and get it to our home. So yes, it was $60, which exceeds my normal entire budget in a year, but it was so worth it. She was every bit as excited as I hoped she'd be.

Similarly, we had been wanting a keyboard in the house for a while, and my husband managed to find this BRAND NEW, IN THE BOX version of exactly the one we wanted for just $80 on Facebook Marketplace. That place served us well this year.

---

The two next items were purchased new, and there's really nothing scrappy to highlight here, other than the fact that instead of the framed picture from MLB, we purchased the poster of Yankee Stadium for $35 and sourced the frame on Amazon for $15. The glove is just an expensive glove (in my opinion) but that was the exact one my son wanted and apparently, my husband said he would have just bought it for him for baseball season anyway, so....maybe we saved ourselves some money if we look at it that way?

So all together, our money spent on Christmas presents was $288. I'm offering myself some grace with that number and fighting the urge to see it as a Forever Scrappy failure. It's not $50, but it's also not $500, so for this year, I'll take it.