I can remember when I was first out on my own and using my own money to buy Christmas gifts, it seemed like every department store had a Layaway plan.  If you aren’t familiar with it, layaway means the store holds your item for you with you leaving a deposit and then making payments on the remaining balance, usually every two weeks, until the item is paid for at which time you can take it home. I used layaway at a downtown East Lansing clothing store to buy a beautiful wool jacket when I was in college, and for a Valentine’s Day surprise, Chris (my now husband who was my boyfriend at the time) made the final payment and surprised me with the coat. It was so sweet!

But, I digress. The point is that the only national department store that still offers layaway is Kmart. Kmart Lay-Away
is a terrific option for purchasing higher priced items without having to shell out the whole purchase price all at once.  The Layaway Program info page has a box where you enter your zip code to find the stores near you that offer layaway; both of the Kmart stores near my house have it. Which got me thinking, what could I put on layaway now that I won’t need for another month but costs more money than I currently have available to spend?

The answer came to me pretty quickly- a new artificial Christmas tree! The one we have is about five years old and wasn’t great quality when we bought it in the first place. I browsed the Kmart site and found this beautiful GE 7 foot Spruce Tree with 600 Multicolor Lights- perfect! I’ll have to go to the store to see whether they are offering the same sale price as the website, which means it will either be $259.99 or $207.99.  I can put down $50 or $60 now and pay the balance in two installments and have a beautiful new tree in time for Christmas decorating! And look how pretty it is:

The Kmart Layaway plan is a great way for budget-conscious shoppers to purchase the items they want without having to use credit cards or loans to pay for them. Check the site to see if there is a Kmart store near you that offers layaway!

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Happy Halloween! For those of you with kids, are you ready for today? My kids each have a costume, I bought some candy, and my friend Kelly is taking the kids out at 6:00 when trick or treating starts in case Chris isn’t home by then. They got a trial run last week when our grocery store had a Halloween Walk:

That’s Antonio on the right, he’s my next door neighbor’s great grandson, then Nathan as Superman, Ryan as, um, Scary Guy with Axe (?), Nathan’s best friend Forrest as Batman (we couldn’t find the mask), and then in front, Kaitlyn as a bundled-up-for-the-cold princess ballerina. The wearing of the Prissy Poofs tutu and the crown I bought at Disneyland was her idea, the turtleneck, sweatshirt and sweatpants were my idea. It gets COLD here when the sun goes down! I still think she looks cute

I hope all of you have a safe and happy Halloween!

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Kaitlyn and I did some shopping yesterday, and while I wasn’t surprised to see magazines at Target with carved pumpkins on the covers, and Halloween costumes and decorations, what did surprise me was that Target also has Thanksgiving decorations out. Because apparently, we are now supposed to completely decorate our houses inside and out for Thanksgiving, just like for Christmas.

Maybe I’m just a cynical grump, but I have a hard enough time keeping my tabletops cleared off enough to accomodate my Christmas decorations for a few weeks let alone have to find places for Autumn Leaf Wreaths and scarecrow bells for heaven’s sakes! I will admit though, I am thinking about sending Thanksgiving gift baskets to my Grandma and Chris’ Grandparents this year, because I think we’re staying home for the holidays this year. It was just too completely stressful and exhausting last year, and I seem to remember Chris and I discussing how nice it would be to just not have to GO anywhere for once.

So yeah, sending a nice basket of fruit and cookies would assuage my guilt about depriving our Grandparents of the joys of our company on Thanksgiving What about you? Have you started making Thanksgiving plans yet? Will you be decorating your house and buying flower or gift baskets? It’s not too soon to start thinking about it, at least not according to Target!

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I am alone in the house. ALONE! My husband took Ryan and Kaitlyn and left to drive down to Ft. Wayne, IN to pick up Nathan from his grandparents’ house, it’s about a 3 1/2 hour drive, so they will be gone ALL DAY. So, what am I going to do with all this free time? Write blog posts of course! And surf the web, of course. Would you expect a website known for it’s snarky t-shirts to also sell hot Halloween costumes? Well, Crazy Dog T-shirts does, and these are definitely meant for grown-ups, not kids.

Crazy Dog has adult Halloween costumes like the classic Ghostbusters and Mario for men, and what guy doesn’t look hot in blue overalls with a big fake mustache? yeah, I’m kidding there They also sell womens Halloween costumes that have a definite sexy twist to them. Snow White doesn’t look so innocent with her miniskirt and red thigh-high stockings. You can also choose from costumes like Genie, Pirate, and “sexy spider”. Hmmm. Check the size you order carefully too, because I checked the Policies page for the return policy, and it seems they don’t do exchanges for Halloween costumes, although that page might be out of date.

So that’s what I’m doing on this sunny and unseasonably cool Saturday afternoon, how about you? I’ve got more posts coming plus giveaways here and on MomReviews, so I hope you will click through the RSS feed and stop by! And PLEASE look in the sidebar for the donation widget to help raise money for tetanus vaccines. Thanks a bunch!!

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I just found out today that when my husband took all three of the kids out Christmas shopping for my gifts, he took them to four different stores. FOUR, people. That’s a LOT of times getting Kaitlyn out of her car seat and putting her back in it. That’s a lot of telling Nathan “no, you can’t get something, we’re shopping for Mom”.

I asked him why they went to four stores, and you know what he said? “I just kept looking for the perfect things for you”. Awwww. He is the sweetest. And he chose really great things, too-the new Dean Koontz hardback (Barnes & Noble), a snowman ornament (Target) snowman salt and pepper shakers (Kohl’s), and snowman earrings (Cracker Barrel).

His gift from me was the new 5 disc HD-DVD Bladerunner box set, which I let him open on Christmas Eve so we could watch it while we finished wrapping presents. They took the original prints of the movie and transferred them to HD, so the movie looks like it was just made. I highly recommend it if you are a fan of Bladerunner!

So it was a great Christmas. I’ve been busy cropping and editing photos and uploading them to Flickr, and I’m setting them all to public, so if you want to see them, go to my Flickr page (or my Flickr badge near the bottom of the right sidebar). I’d love to see yours, too, so if you have some Christmas photos to share, leave me the url in your comment. Oh, and tomorrow? I’m giving away a BOB time manager AND…a year’s supply of Orville Redenbacher popcorn and a year of Netflix! OH YEAH!!

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