I Kindled Him!!

Want to know what made my Christmas amazing this year? We have little...but I gave big. So fun!

Here's what I did:

Hubs & I have given up on buying gifts for one another because our money is OUR money and it felt silly to go out with OUR money and get Hubs something he probably would not spend $$ on because his most favorite thing in the world is to NOT spend $$. Seriously.

I love gifts so this led to Hubs happy system of buying me a little something ($10 perfume) each Christmas and me buying him a can of cashews or some such cheap gift. Very boring and totally UNSATISFACTORY to me. 

Since bringing in a bit of money with my writing, it was in a separate account just for me. But that lasted about 3 months because when we both lost our jobs at the same time, my money became OUR money in order to survive. 

BUT, this year a lovely and giggle-inducing thing happened. A few months before Christmas I received $100 in the mail from a very old friend who remembered my mom when we were all kids and she sent the $$ to me as a memorial to her. I may have written about it to you already. I was thrilled and could not wait to go buy myself some new clothes because that is always my fav way to spend money! 

Another BUT....When I went shopping, I could not get excited about new clothes because I literally never go anywhere but walmart since the job ended. I write at home all day every day...in sweats! (Big life-style change!) I also have gained weight from all that sitting and clothes shopping is not fun when you dislike what you see in those huge mirrors. 

So I came home with $100 still in my purse. Very weird. 

Then I overheard Hubs telling the kids that the best way to go for an e-reader is the Kindle Fire, and then he rattled off all the reasons it is the best value for your $$. Hmm, it suddenly occurred to me that whenever I "lost" him at walmart, he was looking at the e-readers. Hmm. 

Like I said, Hubs is a non-spender, economical, frugal, careful etc. There are other words but I won't use them. :)

I found that the Kindle Fire is $199. If I used my gift money, where would I get another $99 without him knowing and how could I get it on my own. Hmm.

My one stable writing job pays me $100 for 10 articles about every two weeks. Yep, I wrote my little fingers off and sent in 10 articles and asked my boss to please send the $$ to my DIL paypal account so Hubs would not know about it. 

That was working fine...until...My boss sent an e-mail to OUR joint address asking why the pmt had not been accepted in the DIL account yet. OYE! Thankfully I was in a different room when Hubs saw that letter and called to me to ask what it was about because I had to LIE TO HIM. I cannot do that while looking at him! I yelled back that maybe I told her the wrong paypal account and I would look into it.

So I basically told him that we had another $100 on the way because now he knew I had written another batch for them. Make sense?

Now he is ready for that pmt to enter our account. Guess what I had to do? Yep, I had to rip out ANOTHER TEN articles on the sly and send them to her, asking to please contact me on my private email address! OMG! I did it! 

I bought my Hubs a Kindle Fire for Christmas and TOTALLY SURPRISED HIM! You can tell by the pics that he had no clue and it really blew him away! 

So fun! So very fun!

See that little smile........

.....it's because he still thinks I just used a kindle box.

Could she have? 

What did you do?

How? 

Giving me the finger...We had a rule!

So so fun!

The kids also got the finger, for helping me.

Scary face huh? <3

He loves it and uses it all the time!!!