Shopping Daze

*THUNK*

That’s the sound of me falling out of the blogosphere. Eventually, this will become a habit. If only a blog could give me a caffeine boost – then I’d be posting every morning like clockwork!

The holiday season has been on my mind lately, especially all the stresses that go along with it. Only 16 shopping days left – but is anyone shopping? Not me! Or I should say, very little. Partly because I’m one of those annoying people who have the bulk of their Christmas shopping done before Halloween each year. But also I’m making some of the gifts. (And still needing to carve out time to finish them – yikes!)

I took the pledge to buy handmade earlier this year and I’ve stuck to it very well. I have the most AWESOME themed gift for my kid brother – and I thought he would be the second most difficult to shop for. I’m tempted to tell more about it since he doesn’t read my blog. But I swear he has some kind of radar about this type of thing; he’s probably reading this right now… Anyway, his gift contains items from four different Etsy sellers, plus a small piece that I altered myself. And that’s all I’m telling for now.

However, I’m still stuck on a handmade item for my dad. I always find gift guides for dads to be baffling – they never include anything MY dad would want. Oh, wait, I take that back: there’s some BBQ sauce included in the Etsy Gift Guide for dads. But that’s one of my staple buys for Father’s Day… Yes, he is so hard to shop for, that my fall-back present is food. The real problem is that Dad is such an expert at his hobbies and interests that you need his direct input before buying anything. And where’s the fun in that? Dad may prove to be the handmade conundrum.