{To Give Or Not To Give}

Christmas time is such a wonderful time of year, for most. It's full of annoying music, mouth-watering food, fattening desserts, surprising gifts, and lots of family and friends. I love this time of year!! I love this time of year because it feeds my shopping addiction, but I don't feel so bad spending all of my Hubby's hard earned money because I am buying for others. :-) One of the difficult tasks for me is buying people a fabulous gift that either:  A) They Love! B) They Love, but now feel like shit about what they got you C) They Love it, and now everyone else in the room wants to hide their gift. I mean it's really hard to buy for the people we love because we want to give them the best, but we don't want them to feel like they have to sell their left kidney to earn it. We have some fabulous gifts on our list: two ipad minis, kitchen aid mixers, William-Sonoma all Clad kitchenware set, $100 gift cards to various stores and restaurants {yes gift cards, my husband hates them, but I'd much rather receive a gift card to a store I love than a gift I hate}, Lucchese boots, Burberry jacket, Burberry Scar, Coach Wristlet, etc.   I do not just pick a random spectacular gift and buy it for them, I pay close attention the entire year to what they say they want or wish they had. Then I compose a list on my phone to refer to later around Christmas or birthdays. But how do you go about distributing great gifts and expecting the recipient to understand that you do not expect equal costing gifts?? It was really vexatious to me when my sweet Grandpa {who is rather wealthy himself} text me saying he was Christmas shopping for my husband and I, but couldn't pick something because "what do you get the couple that has everything?".  I shudder at the thought of family members dreading shopping for us. Hell, a hand painted photo or a framed picture would mean the world to me! This may sound pathetic, but we have literally resorted to buying mediocre gifts to appease everyone's conscious, then dropping random gifts off at families houses wrapped in our "Specialty" paper from "Santa". Ha! I don't care if they thank us for the gifts, I just want them to have something awesome they may not have bought themselves, adults included! Especially adults.  Does this make me sound {crazy}? LOL