This week for Works for Me Wednesday, hosted by none other than Rocks in My Dryer I wanted to share one of our fun holiday traditions.  Stocking stuffers are one of those things I tend to forget about until the last minute, and then realize I need to get it done.  Also, I found that being married I suddenly had to fill my own stocking - no fun!  So one year, my husband and I cooked up a fun, as-competitive-as-you-want-it-to-be game called the Stocking Stuffer Dash.  We pick a day for a trip to the mall - traditionally it’s Christmas Eve Day, you know just to get in the Festive Spirit and watch people in a panic as the minutes tick away.  We set a time limit and a budget - typically 45 minutes and twenty dollars.  Then we go our separate ways and begin to look in the mall for the most unique stocking gifts, making sure to keep our receipts for proof if needed.

So, off we go, Starbucks in hand (at least for me) in search of the bizarre.  Last year I bought him a pooping reindeer keychain, complete with brown candies.  He bought me an envelope from Hallmark with his last four cents the year before that - to be at precisely twenty dollars (it’s a challenge competing against such a creative mind!).  The goal is to get as close to the full budget as possible, without going over - in the allotted time. It’s amazing the cool little things you can find and how inventive you can be - you might even learn some useful haggling skills!

When you get home, you wrap the gifts up and wait until Christmas morning.  Now the game can end there, OR if you’d like to add a competitive edge, you can assign points.  For example, one point for the person coming closest to twenty dollars, one point for the most creative, one point for greatest number of items.  We can hardly wait until our son is old enough to join in this tradition.