August = Time to Start the Holiday Challenge

Ah – August. We have settled into summer, with endless days of heat and humidity. The swimsuits are all stretched and faded from constant use. Hacking open a watermelon is the only kind of cooking that I want to do. The dog reminds me, with his uncanny ability to find the coolest spot in any place, why these are the dog days of summer. In August, I lift my eyes to the calendar, and find myself mentally preparing – for the holidays.

The holidays? Aren’t they 4 months and 1 ½ seasons away?

Precisely. That’s precisely when an obsessive over-planner (like Darth Mama) starts getting ready. Well, not exactly. I never really stop getting ready for the next one. I just start gearing up more now.

This year, I’m trying something a little different. As an obsessive over-planner and a compulsive bargain shopper, I have a tendency to go a little (a lot) (an ENORMOUS AMOUNT) overboard. Now, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop flinging myself overboard, but I’ll add a twist – and maybe a double back flip – this year.

Which brings me to the twist -- my HOLIDAY CHALLENGE. This year’s theme? How low can you go. How little can I spend while still doing my usual big holiday splash for the kiddies and my husband?

A few simple rules for my challenge – I start now, where I am and with what I have. For example, I have about $9 in gift cards sitting in my account at http://www.amazon.com/. In my holiday challenge, I am free to use that amount without “charging” it to my cash total (especially since those gift cards were free with swagbucks, but that’s another blog post). The cost of stamps will not be included in my holiday total (mostly because I don’t think I’ll be able to keep track of all the stamps I use for sending in rebates, and because I receive 10 stamps a month free from Quad Readers Club – but again, that’s another blog post). If I have stuff squirreled away in my house, it’s free game to use as gifts, because there’s no way I’ll remember accurately how much I paid for it, and it’s better to use what I’ve got than to keep on buying (plus I just stumbled across a Hello Kitty poster yesterday hidden away in my kitchen cabinets – don’t’ ask how it ended up there -- that would be GREAT for my daughter’s room). Gifts with purchase count as free so long as there is a real use for the purchase. For example, if I buy a happy meal for lunch and save the toy for a kiddie present, the toy counts as free only if I actually eat the happy meal for lunch (and do not eat two lunches, which is something that I should not do even if it doesn’t violate my Holiday Challenge rules).

And here’s the double back flip part – our family celebrates Diwali as our big holiday, which falls on November 5 in 2010. So, I’ll have to finish the bulk of my challenge BEFORE the Black Friday sales. We also do stockings for Christmas but the gifts are much, much smaller. That means two holidays instead of one, with the big part coming early.

So – here’s the first things I did for the challenge:

1. I moved that Hello Kitty poster to my gift stash so I can find it at holiday time. That's assuming my stash stays in the same place, and I do not forget where my current stash is (now you understand even better the "if it's in the house, it's free game" rule. I estimate I have at least three stashes that I've lost and I am still hoping to stumble across).
2. I sent off for a free Toy Story 3 story book from Band-Aid with three proofs of purchase. http://www.bandaid.com/offers
3. I checked my credits at http://www.paperbackswap/ and pondered what the kiddies would like, but have not ordered anything yet.

Anyone care to join me in my holiday challenge? Jump in with a comment!