Need Help With Your Holiday Shopping?

By the end of this week, I was really nervous that I had not done a lot of my holiday shopping. Considering myself fairly organized and in general up tight about deadlines, I started to get panicky. To ease my nerves, I got proactive and boy did it help!

* First, make a list of everyone to whom you feel you should give gifts. I broke my list down into: Family, Friends, Colleagues and Other (ie – service providers, teachers, etc). If you want to stay out of massive credit card debt, it is a good idea to add a dollar amount next to the person’s name so that you can be realistic about how much you should really spend.

* Second, it helps to have some catalogs lying around that you like. I did, so I went through each of them, dog-eared the pages, circled the items I liked and then, on the front cover, wrote a list of all of the pages that I found things and the name of the person to which I planned on giving the gift.

* If you don’t have any fabulous or motivating catalogs around, let me recommend some good sites from which I ordered this weekend and from which, in general, I have had really good experiences.
– www.oriacdesign.com (you’ll have to look at this site, I don’t know how to categorize it except to say that the design factor is really good)
– www.amazon.com (great for more than just books, just type in a category, but don’t limit the search to only books)
– www.momastore.org (very well designed gifts that are practical, fun and beautiful, plus all purchases benefit the Museum of Modern Art in New York)
– www.redenvelope.com (classy gifts that you won’t find everywhere, also really good for guy stuff or corporate gifts)
– (more than just drugs, great lotions and products, I like Philosophy)
– www.bestbuy.com (good deals right now on digital cameras and all kinds of other fun gadgets. For more info on taking great digital photos, visit: www.emjaycreative.com)
– www.ebates.com (before you shop anywhere, you absolutely must sign up with ebates.com. You’ll get cash back when you make your purchases. To sign up, paste this entire link into your browser: http://www.ebates.com/affiliate_landing.jsp?promotion_code=REF1&eeid=13840&banner=9710&referrer=marley@thepartygoddess.com&refpageid=1 You’ll get $1 in your account. Then when you refer a friend, you’ll get $5 into your account.)

Happy shopping and I’ll keep you posted as I come up with any other good shopping shortcuts!