12 Days of Christmas Gifts for Lo
Lo and I don’t exchange “gifts” for Christmas, but I wanted to do something special for him that wouldn’t cost a ton of money. We have a fireplace now, so we were filling stockings for each other, but I thought it would be fun to start the season early with the 12 Days of Christmas. I don’t know where I got the idea first, but when I googled it, I found 12 Days of Christmas post on Passionate Homemaking, which was the most helpful because there were so many comments and ideas. I got the cute printable tags from All Our Days, which I found in the comments of the first blog listed.
I know (because Chuck kept reminding us) that the 12 Days of Christmas actually starts AFTER Christmas, but we were going to be traveling at that point so it would be much harder. Plus, once the holidays are over, I’m usually done with Christmas and wouldn’t have wanted to extend it. I started the 12 days on December 13, so I could end on Christmas Eve. I struggled with ideas for some of the days, but finally came up with something (or made something up) for each.
Lo was really surprised, in the beginning especially. And then he was kind of confused. And then he felt bad because he didn’t have presents for me. I kept reminding him that it’s not about how many presents and that I just wanted to do this for him. Plus, most of the items were inexpensive, homemade, or things that he would have bought himself at some point anyway. He kept saying – I don’t have 12 things for your stocking. I just told him that I wouldn’t have 12 for his stocking either because some of this stuff would have been in his stocking. And then he totally surprised me by putting this beautiful ring in my stocking that he had ordered prior to this 12 days business, by the way – and I was the one who felt bad for putting more silly stuff in his stocking. But we needed to remember that Christmas gifts aren’t about how many or how much – it’s about the thought. Here are the 12 days of Christmas gifts:
- Day 1: One homemade ornament with an impression of the key to our first house, which we bought in May.
- Day 2: Two tickets to any movie of his choosing – I’ll do a tutorial on how to personalize tickets/invites like this soon!
- Day 3: Three packs of gum
- Day 4: Four chocolate shakes from Arby’s in the form of a gift card for the appropriate amount. He almost always stops for a shake when we make the 3 hour trip to my parents (an occasional other times)
- Day 5: Five pair of boxers
- Day 6: Six pair of dress socks
- Day 7: Seven packs of almonds
- Day 8: Eight Reese’s Cups
- Day 9: Nine months of designated driving at some point (assuming I get knocked up this year)
- Day 10: Ten bags of popcorn
- Day 11: Eleven travel essentials for our trip to Siesta Key
- Day 12: Twelve bottles of Christmas Ale disguised at Rudolph. This must have been a popular idea this year from Pinterest because Micheal’s Craft Store was sold out of brown pipe cleaners and they had just received a shipment that morning! I had to go with a variety pack that had 2 different colors of brown.
So these were all pretty simple things – I struggled a little bit with day nine, obviously. It’s not really a gift because it’s not like I’ll have a choice of whether I can drink or not if I get pregnant – but it’s all that I could come up with on short notice. I guess in the end it would be the gift of a baby and that requires giving up control of my body for nine months. Of course, I can’t guarantee that this will happen for us – all we can do is hope that we are lucky enough. For some of the other days, I just browsed Target or the grocery store for items that were of the correct amount – but making sure to buy something that he’d like still. Or I picked items that I knew I wanted to give and fit them into the appropriate day.
Have you ever done a 12 Days of Christmas? Do you have any suggestions for certain days?