I’ve been suffering the mall on Saturdays for so many Christmas shopping seasons that I had grown to have nightmares about it. And I like our mall, with it’s carpet and cinnamon sugar pretzel bites. But no matter how yummy the snacks are, the mall is a horrible place to be on Saturday in December.

But I have learned a valuable lesson today. Before lunch on a weekday? The mall is not so bad! I hit about six stores just over my lunch break. I work close enough to the good mall that it’s less than five minutes there and back, so I knocked out a crapload of Christmas shopping without even the slightest rise in my blood pressure. I had freedom to browse without worrying that the woman behind me would stab me with her cell phone for the last pair of striped leggings. I even had the luxury to ask for help from the employees - who actually seemed happy to help me because, if you can believe it, I think they were bored.

Screw the mall on the weekends. I’m never doing that again. It’s all weekdays pre-lunch all the time, baby. Fare the well shopping anxiety, Hello lines of credit!

DUDE. You all know I made my Wedding cake out of donuts, right? WELL. Guess what I found? A glazed donut necklace. And it’s scented. I don’t think I would ever buy that necklace, because I’m afraid it is grouped with light-up holiday sweaters: Stuff I Find Totally Awesome But Would Never Wear. But - it is out of stock. Which means other people don’t think the same way I do. WHICH IS AWESOME. I love people who wear that kind of crap. And if you look at their main jewelery page you’ll find that a lot of their stuff is out of stock. I find that so awesome I may be a little misty-eyed. People are wearing dessert jewelery! Scented dessert jewelery!The terrorists have not won after all.

[Thanks Sundry Buzz]

For those of you wondering what ever happened to our old camera, you’ll be happy to learn that it as of this morning, we still hadn’t gotten it back from the repair shop. It was supposed to be repaired and returned by the 19th. As far as the online-status is concerned, it is still being “Shipped to Repair Center” which indicates that either (a) The repair center is on Neptune or (b) The camera was not going to be repaired. This is why we just went out and bought the new camera last week. We didn’t want to head out of town without a camera so we just bought the high-end Nikon we had been thinking about for months.

Well, it turns out my Canon is broken beyond repair! Yay! Do you know why I’m happy about that? Because that means we can get a NEW one since we ordered the repair plan from Best Buy. This rocks my socks because we have actually been wanting a much slimmer version since the S2IS gets abused in my purse on a daily basis. (Hence the four trips to the repair shop.) Brand new - that camera is $280 dollars by today’s standards, so we’re not sure how that will translate to the models they currently have on the shelves. We’d love the SD 800 since it is more streamlined for purse storage, but the price is a bit higher, so we may have to settle for the SD700. Either way - we’ll be getting a camera much better suited to be bounced around between my keys, my cell phone, and any number of cookies stashed in my purse for Emergency Toddler Freak-Out Management.

For NikkiZ’s birthday last month, we used all of the birthday budget money for her party and her new big-girl car seat. We didn’t really buy her any presents because, well, why should we? We knew she’d get tons at her party and since she is my second child, I am well aware that with all of her rockin’ new toys, some days she’ll just play with a box of band-aids for hours on end.

(Yes. She did that this weekend.)

Christmas is coming up and I’m kinda thinking the same thing. MrZ and LilZ, of course, are just the opposite. They are seeing commercials on TV and seeing things in the store they want to buy her. We are going to get her another big-girl car-seat for MrZ’s car, and then some small things for sure, but if I’m in charge - that will be the end of it. She doesn’t really need anything, and it seems silly to buy a bunch of stuff when she already has a bunch of stuff to play with and sometimes she acts like none of it’s there. And I know she’ll get stuff from everyone else, and she’ll totally get into helping everyone else open presents…she won’t care what’s inside.

I’m being a Grinch, aren’t I? Is the buying of presents at this age more for the family than for the kid? Should I send MrZ and LilZ out shopping for her and just let them enjoy that part (because I don’t) while I sit at home and nap?

Wait. That’s an awesome idea! Never mind…there’s my solution right there. Dude. I’m a genius.

Sometimes I get sent links to stuff that I love and possible even buy but never even mention on this site because I’m selfish and like to keep the goods to myself. HOWEVER, this is National Blog Posting Month and I went and set a goal for 100 entries during November and I’m desperate for material, so here it goes: Something totally awesome that I’m sharing with you.

Antique map wrapping paper. How cool is this? Now, of course I would only wrap the most special of presents in it (i.e. - my own presents, of course) but still! So pretty! Possibly even pretty enough to be framed and hung on the wall instead of used to wrap things with.

Thank you Amber from Awesome! - you totally lived up to the domain you write for.