Christmas At The Pages: Official Christmas Wrap-Up [Mega-Post]

Dec 30, 2014 | About Jordan, Baby and Kids, Budgeting Tips, Costco, Family Time, Finances, Food, Gift Ideas, Grocery Shopping, Holidays, Inside FCF, Lifestyle, Our Home, Shopping Tips, Utah

stockings

…and POOF! Christmas is over. Did that fly by for anyone else?? Even though we decorated early and tried to squeeze every second out of the Christmas season, it still flew by. It's been forever and a day since I've done a wrap-up post, so I thought I'd start by wrapping up our Christmas week with y'all! So here is a complete mega-post rundown of how we do Christmas in the #PageHousehold, including exactly how much we spent on Christmas gifts! (Hint: See the #ChristmasAtThePages hashtag on Instagram for lots more over-sharing, especially on my family page @JordanFPage.)

Here's how Christmas At The Pages went…

We dressed our kiddos up all cutesy-like for church the Sunday before Christmas, of course.

christmas

christmas

Priya's dress was from Costco, a Christmas present from Bubba's mom. Hutch's sweater was also from Bubba's mom. Hutch's tie, Beck's suit and tie, and Daivy's dress were all from Savers (a thrift store near my house)! Daivy's bow was a hand-me-down.

We hosted Christmas this year for my parents and younger brother. In preparation for family coming, I hit up one final grocery store run. I price-matched some fabulous deals and got our Christmas dinner items for a steal.

food

Once my parents got to town from Oregon, we hit up some fun Utah winter activities…Temple Square being one of our first stops, of course. If you haven't been, you need to! It's gorgeous. We somehow forgot Priya's coat, but luckily Bubba had an extra…which is why she looks like ET and a minion had a baby.

temple square

Between hosting the holiday, having a newborn, and prepping for Christmas, I hardly had time to brush my teeth each day, let alone look semi-human! I found myself using my hot curlers for quick and easy huuuuur! (see how I use hot rollers HERE)

christmas1

Unfortunately my mom and brother got the flu over Christmas, and my 3 big kids got colds. It put a damper on some of the outdoor things we planned on doing (tubing, sledding, carriage ride down town, etc.). So we stayed at home, drank hot chocolate, and watched lots of christmas movies while cuddling this cutie.

Daivy

On Christmas Eve the kids opened their Christmas jammies from Mimi (my mom), which were all Disney-themed since we're going to Disneyland in February (and I CAN'T WAIT!).

jammies

The kids also got to open a special gift from their two Elves…new slippers! (A new tradition I started this year. Got the slippers for $6 at Costco.)

elves

We bundled the kids up and drove through the lights at Thanksgiving Point after dinner.

lights

The kids put out Santa's goodie plate then headed to bed.  The adults stayed up to watch our family tradition, A Christmas Story, and wrap presents. Bubba was cursing the world for having to put this trampoline together. It took FOREVER! (keep reading for how we got a good deal on it, and how much we spent on our kids for Christmas.)

christmas eve

While he worked on that, I packed and packed and packed…a shipment of Bomb Shelter Covers! YIPPEE!!!

bomb shelter baby

Don't worry, I'll share full details on this adventure soon. The nutshell version is that I invented a fabulous (if I do say so myself) full-coverage nursing cover dubbed the “Bomb Shelter”. There was NOTHING like it on the market so I figured it had to be done! I've been working on it since early Spring. After lots of hiccups and hangups, they finally made it through customs and are HEEEEEERE! (Pssst…use the code PREORDER to order yours at 55% off for a limited time). Order yours and see more pictures at BombShelterBaby.com, and see all the creative uses for The Bomb Shelter Cover on our Instagram page. Shameless plug complete. Back to Christmas shtuff.

When we finished wrapping all the gifts, I couldn't believe how MANY there were! We actually had so many we had to put some under a second, smaller tree in our Piano room. Sheesh. This is precisely why we only buy our kids 2 gifts! (more on that below)

presents

We got the house all ready for Christmas morning. Christmas morning really is magical, isn't it??

christmas

 

For some crazy reason my insanely early risers-of-children SLEEP IN on Christmas morning! Most likely due to them not feeling well. Regardless, we had to wake them up at 9am to get the show on the road! I found Beck, dead asleep, half-naked in his bed. Typical, wild Beck 🙂

beck

Here's what we did for Christmas gifts:

As I explain in the “How much to spend on your kids for Christmas” post series, we try to stick within a budget for our gifts…but we also set a certain NUMBER of gifts as well. Here's what we do:

  • For our kids: 2 gifts – 1 from us, 1 from Santa ($50 total per kid), stockings from mom & dad ($20 or less).
  • For me and Bubba: we give each other 1 main gift ($100 or less), + stockings for each other ($50 or less)
  • For our parents: $35 – $50 budget. This year we spent $60 on my mom, but only spent $35 on my dad so it tends to average out.
  • For cousins, nieces and nephews: We draw names, our budget is $15 – $20. We wait until an awesome toy goes on sale and usually get a toy valued higher than $20 without having to spend more than $20.
  • For siblings, grandparents, and in-laws: We draw names, our budget is $35 or less, but we can usually do awesome gifts for around $25.
  • Neighbor gifts: $3 or less, but we really aim for $1 per neighbor (we do at least $50 neighbor gifts and it really adds up!)

Our mindset is: it's not about how much we SPEND, it's about how much the gift is VALUED at. We buy things off-season, black friday, and watch sales, which allows us to give high-value gifts without spending full-price.

As for stockings:

stockings

I do the stockings. I enjoy doing them and tend to go overboard, since we don't do much by way of big gifts. I typically have to put 1/3 of the stuff BACK to reign myself in (especially for Priya's stocking!).

I fill them with dollar store and Target dollar bin trinkets that include things like: toothpaste, $0.50 play dough, chapstick, hair bows for the girls, bubble bath, a coloring book, a 3-pack of underwear, some treats, markers or crayons, one ornament for each kid, and we always put an orange in the toe of the stocking (a tradition my parents started).

The clothes pictured were from Nana Page…I was just too lazy to wrap yet another gift. Daivy doesn't know the difference so all I did for her was a few hair bows and some swaddle blankets that I recently bought. I knew Hutch would be concerned if Daivy didn't have a stocking to open too 😉

Each year we wonder why we even give gifts to our kids at all…they would be happy as pie with the stockings alone!

stockings

For Bubba this year I did things like gum, mouthwash, Kinetic Sand (for his desk), an electric toothbrush, body wash, treats, and ankle weights and dumbbells for his morning exercises…you know, super exciting stuff like that 😉

bubba

For my stocking Bubba did things like candy, a scarf, gum, a bouquet of flowers, gloves, and chapstick. No, I'm not posting a picture of me with my stocking because I don't want to scare anyone away from this blog indefinitely. Jordan + bedhead + no makeup + dark circles under eyes = ain't nobody needs to see dat.

For our kids' gifts:

Here's what we did for our kids:

HUTCH: a 5-pack of Matchbox cars from us ($5 from Walmart), a talking Spider Man bank from Santa ($20 from Costco). He got SO MANY other toys from his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, he hardly had the energy to open them all (he was pretty sick on Christmas day, poor guy).

hutch

PRIYA: Sparkly pink shoes from us (free – we actually made $10 off of them! Read below for that story), and 2 Disney ballerina barbies from Santa ($7.50 each from Walmart). She got an incredible amount of awesome stuff from other family members, including this Belle dress that I wish more than life itself, came in my size.

Priya

As for the free shoes…

I got her some pink sparkly shoes for free from Zulily. They were listed for about $10 I believe, but I got them free because I had some “refer a friend” dollars saved up. When they arrived they had blue ink on the white sole of the shoe that wouldn't come off.

shoes

I contacted Zulily and asked for a replacement pair. They were out of stock so they refunded my money, gave me $10 extra Zulily dollars for my trouble, and said I could keep or donate the shoes. Um…OK! We gave the shoes to her anyway (she doesn't care about a little ink on the sole) and made $10 from it all!

pink shoes

BECK: A motorized motorized Thomas train for his track from us ($10), and this kid trampoline from Santa ($35 – flash sale on Amazon).  This blurry picture is perfect of him because that's basically what he was all morning…a sprinting, sticky blur. I don't think he stopped running (or bouncing!) for two hours straight. PS – the Olaf undies he got in his stocking were by far his favorite gift. Go figure.

beck

BUBBA: I got him some snow shoes and poles from Costco ($65). From family some of his gifts included a fancy new watch, Aqua Di Gio cologne (my favorite), a dart board for his office.

ME: I got a Roku player from Bubba. My gifts from family included super nerdy gifts that I am BEYOND excited about such as a food dehydrator and Dehydrator Bible, a cute Damask crock pot and cook book, some cute scarves and gloves, and a knife block for my beloved Cutco knives (that are currently sitting in a drawer – not a good idea).

We all got so many gifts (our kids especially), it took us several hours to open them all. Next year we might even cut back to just one gift from Santa, because more than that just isn't needed! It was a fabulous Christmas, we are very grateful to our generous family members for spoiling us all rotten.

After-Christmas Activities:

We had planned to go tubing or sledding Christmas day, but several people were sick as dogs so we stayed home and laid low. I cooked Christmas dinner while all the sicky-sicks slept. I attempted to make my favorite pretzel jello salad but bought a 0.6oz box of Jello at the store instead of 6oz. I had to improvize and added enough 0.6 boxes I had on-hand to equal 6 ounces. Note to self: that does NOT work. The jello turned out like concrete. #DinnerFail.

jello

We had ham, funeral potatoes, “jello”, and rolls. We kept it simple because Bubba, my dad, and I were the only ones that ate it because everyone else was sick. Waaaahp waaaaah.

Once everyone was feeling better we had fun over the next few days. We went bowling and to an arcade,

bowling

Notice the pink sparkly shoes?? 😉

 

Went swimming at our gym,

swimming

Went to several movies, and out to dinner with friends. Turns out Daivy loves Chinese food.

Daivy

WARNING: Another shameless plug coming…

Daivy came with us everywhere. I had no problem nursing her in the middle of a movie, at the restaurant table, and even mid-bowling without flashing a single side-boob shot (TMI?) thanks to my Bomb Shelter cover. Remember: use the code PREORDER to get yours 55% off ($15.99) right now!

Bomb Shelter Cover

Ok, I promise to be done with the plugs now.

A few days after Christmas my friend Tiff and I hit up the Walmart after-Christmas clearance and nabbed a few small decorations for next year, as well as treats for the rest of my neighbor gifts (I ran out of Santa plates – DOH!).

clearance Over-all it was a fabulous Christmas, and I can't wait for New Years! (We are hosting New Years for both Bubba's family AND mine, so it's bound to be a wild ride.)

Hope yours was as adventurous as ours! Happy Holidays,

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1 Comment

  1. Janice

    Sounds like a pretty great Christmas! I hope your sickies are feeling better. We had some sickies here but they are all on the mend now! Just ordered the nursing cover and I’m beyond excited to get it! I have the world’s wiggliest nurser and can’t wait to have something that actually covers her!

    Reply

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