Christmas Shopping

The gift of art…

(What do you mean you haven’t STARTED your Christmas shopping yet??)

You do realize that this time next week, the stores will be crawling with holiday shoppers, that you are NO LONGER AHEAD of the game, that you can’t say, “Ah, yes, well, I’m finished already,” with that superior little smile of yours…

Its getting close now… the little ticker says 34 days.

You realize that you don’t have to spend lots of money to give personal gifts to friends and family alike. You know that special is better than expensive. Carefully thought out is better than load the shopping cart, one in every size for every name on you list.

What will you do with that knowledge? Are you making intelligent decisions, or will you find yourself trolling the hallways of the mall last minute, like last year?

I have a solution! And a reward for your sensible shopping! (It’s still BEFORE  Black Friday, and you can keep crossing off those names!!)

A FREE GIVEAWAY! The TENTH (10th) person to order photographic prints from my website after this post is posted will receive a free 11×14 print from my site. Any image that you want; you can gift it or give it to yourself as a reward for finishing up that Christmas list!!

By the way, this IS a win/win situation, because whether you are #10 or not, you will have made some Christmas purchases!

Rules will be:

  • Go to The View From the Passenger Window.
  • Order something. Anything. (Everything, lol)
  • I receive an email confirmation of your order.
  • Based on the date/time stamp of the message, I will identify lucky #10!!!

Pass this message on!

Happy Shopping!

Trish…

It’s Downhill from here….

The little ticker on my home page doesn’t lie, folks. THIRTY-NINE days till Christmas. That’s like, a month, dude, give or take a few days!

Are you ready for the holidays? Do you have the food planned for your Thanksgiving feast? (Nope, the list hasn’t come ‘round yet.)

Do you know where you are going? (The other Green House, if dinner is early enough. Otherwise I am getting a plate of leftovers to enjoy after dealing with the masses of the well fed and football challenged who will feel the need to descend upon the store at 5 pm, Thursday.) Who you are going with? (Timmy, I hope! (see above)…)

Have you plotted out your pre-strategy for Black Friday? (My preferred strategy is to to sleep in, and stay home, but my second choice is to be at the store at 5:30 AM—the only chance of getting home at a decent hour is if I open…)

You do know WHAT you want to buy, don’t you?? Your Christmas list is sitting right next to the computer, isn’t it? With lots of things crossed off already because you have been SO efficient this year? So that every little hint of inspiration is duly noted before it fades off into the ether, right?

(Oh, wait. You were going to be CREATIVE this Christmas. You were going to MAKE everything. Better get on it, chickie…times a-wasting!)

Go to the post office this week, buy your stamps (what do you mean you haven’t finished making your Christmas cards??? Not bought, either?? Tssk tsk…. ) Come on… it’s time NOW, so you don’t have to stand on line LATER! If you are VERY lucky, you have one of those APS machines and you can leave the house right now, Sunday afternoon, and take care of this small, but important task! (HINT: the parking lot is empty…..)

AND!!!!! Not only am I pulling together your PHOTO A DAY for the month of December, I am putting the finishing touches on a gift for YOU, this very moment….stay tuned for a very special give-away …..

Christmas without Wally…

(Wally-World, that is.) I can do it, can you?

I dislike– in so many ways it can’t be adequately described– Wal-Mart.

So much so that I can tell you exactly when I last set foot into my local WM. It was just over a week before Thanksgiving. So that puts it at what, 49 weeks ago?? I can’t say I’ve missed a thing not being there. Understand please, that it is SO convenient to my daily world that I can see the sign over the front entrance from the window of my job; that their parking lot is across the street from my parking lot….

I just am never HAPPY when I am there. The light is ‘off’, the air moves oddly, the hollow feeling of the place, even when over-loaded with (often cranky) people just bothers me. I have never saved enough money there to make it worth my while.

I have never found it one-stop-shopping enough to make it worth my while. It isn’t more than a lowest-common-denominator kind of place for me.

I have never stood on the check-out line without the thought running through my head, “WHY did I come in here?” (And all this without the first echo of the more overt political, environmental, labor and capitalistic  etc. issues that cause me to simply not need WM in my life!)

Oh, back when I lived on the Island, and the closest WM was over a bridge in another state, AND was a relatively new addition even there, I thought it was a fine thing.  A place I would have to make PLANS to get to. (It was before a Target became available to me, in that same out-of-state, ‘destination’ type of experience that even IKEA was.)

And when I moved here, I did on occasion shop there; before I really became comfortable with the other local grocery stores, and who carried what; before I had learned my way about the area.

It is the only place down here open 24 hours, and coming from a city where EVERYTHING seemed to be open 24 hours (even Home Depot), I felt it was the place to be. However, there is nothing I would need in the middle of the night that I can’t find at my CVS, closer to home and less of a headache.

So, with perfect honesty, I can say, I will not be doing my Christmas-ing at WM. I realize that for some, WM really IS the only ‘local’ alternative. And I feel for you. But, if you are reading this blog, you have within your reach, the entire WORLD.

Use it! Keep your UPS man in a job, and buy online! In your jammies, in the middle of the night, and think about those fools standing in WM at 3 am, cursing the 25 CLOSED cash register lines, while they stand 10 deep at the 3 lines open, waiting their turn to deal with tired, harried cashiers.

And order gifts to your hearts content; gifts far more unique, more whimsical and probably far more personal than the same red and black plaid flannel shirt that exactly 3,550,673 other tired Christmas shoppers tossed into their carts at the last minute, remembering that Uncle Jimmy would be at Christmas dinner this year!

(What? you don’t want to pay shipping and handling?? Well, how about GAS, and TIME, and all the other things that end up in the cart over and above what you NEEDED??)

Where to shop? Well, let me list a few gems:

Photography My photos, they make WONDERFUL gifts…

Collectibles My Dad’s web-site, where you will be able to find one-of-a-kind ephemera and small household collectibles; things that you will remember from your youth, and things that will make you smile…

T-shirts My babiest brudder’s T-shirt site…(he has a more unique view on the world than most, a great site for the teens and young adults you need to shop for…)

And hey, there are a gazillion OTHER sites out there, big and small, that offer just about anything!!! (But, if I were to start picking and choosing…. well, I figure I will just advertise for Us!! LOL)

(Oh, and by the way, I am NO LONGER early, folks. It is NOT too soon to be thinking about Christmas gifting. It is 53 DAYS till Christmas, otherwise known as November 1st, AKA ‘Happy Birthday Kerin and Elaine!’)