Through the maze.

Well, yesterday a group of us, (consisting of 3 adults who have recently each bought and moved into a house, a 7 year old, a (nearly) 4 year old and and 8 month old - said kidlets belonging to one of aforesaid adults - and me) made what is possibly turning into a traditional pre-Xmas trip to Ikea. This is the 2nd time. One more time and it will become entrenched.

It's a dangerous place, even if you are resistant to the furniture, there are lots of odds and ends that catch the eye as you wend your way around the maze of the store, designed of course so that you go past everything. Unless of course you are so much an Ikea addict as to know some of the secret shortcuts. I was lucky to get out spending under $50, but not all my companions were so restrained. (At that I'm still wondering if I should have grabbed one of the blue star lamps, it was so cute.)

Then most of us also continued round the corner to a little educational toy store, which providentally is moving and hence was having a 20% off all stock sale...

A little wandering around Kmart this afternoon has mostly finished off my Xmas shopping for kidlets (which is fairly significant this year, my normal social crowd is not quite 50% young children, but it's not off by that much.)

So I am in the enviable position of having finished the main part of my Christmas shopping and still have 9 days to go to decide whether to get more personalised presents for extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins etc.) or to fall back on confectionary. It's hard to know what to buy for people you see only a few times a year.

Tomorrow will probably be spent wrapping presents and writing cards and putting said presents, at least temporarily, under (well around) my little fiber optic christmas tree which I dragged out earlier today.