Holiday hosting on a budget.

The current economy is hard for everyone, fortunately you can still host an amazing holiday celebration and make your holiday meals. We've come up with the following tips so you can keep your wallet tight without having to tighten your belt.

Setting a budget is very important. Sticking to it is even more crucial! A good way to save money is to make a shopping list. This can often help you stay away from those pesky impulse buys. Coupons are also a great resource for saving money on your holiday budget. There are various places you can find really great coupons. Your local Sunday paper and various weekly editions contain coupon inserts such as the Smart Source. There are also websites that allow you to print coupons directly from your home printer such as Coupons.com. We have also found that shopping blogs dedicated to saving money with certain stores, or in general, are our best resource. Many of these blogs will post where to find the coupons for that certain store or item you are looking for. Most of them tell you how to match up coupons, combining a store coupon with a manufacturer coupon, helping you get the most out of your savings. In-store fliers and circulars are also great ways to know the specials your local stores are running. Becoming a shopping card member, if applicable, is also a necessity for taking advantage of the best offers.

Depending on the size of your holiday get together and the budget of everyone involved, a great idea for your holiday fare would be to host a pot luck dinner; having each guest bring a dish or two. The host can assign dishes to bring, draw names and dishes out of a hat, or allow guests to decide for themselves. Pot luck dinners are great for holiday meals as they can allow a large and diverse variety of food for relatively low cost.

As with the pot luck dinner, your gift giving can be done in much the same way. Drawing names and/or participating in a secret Santa is a great way to insure that everyone present receives a gift without spending a ton of money themselves. Remember to set a monetary gift limit to insure that no one spends too much. Another original idea would be to do an ornament exchange, holiday sweet treat exchange, or a holiday hand-made exchange.

Finally, after the holiday season most stores put all of their left-over seasonal items on clearance. This is a good way to stock up on your favorite decorations or tableware for the next year. We hope this post gives you some ideas on how to save money and we hope you have a happy holiday.



Disclosure: This post was sponsored by ConAgra Foods. All opinions are 100% honest and that of the author.

Music Monday - Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)

No holiday would be complete without the famous Christmas Song by Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)! Elijah loves to sing and dance to both the original and the new versions of the songs!

Original Version:

2007 Version:

Special stop-motion animation episode of Community airs tomorrow!

NBC's "Community" is a fresh sit-com about a varied group of students at a community college in Colorado. It has a history of great writing backed by an excellent cast, including the legendary Chevy Chase. This week's episode is a Christmas special filmed in stop-motion animation. Thanks to One2One Network I was able to preview the episode before it airs tomorrow, this Thursday December 9th @ 8pm EST/7pm CST on NBC. The episode is full of laughs whether you celebrate Christmas or not!

As is usual for the series, this episode skillfully delivers a solid plot with plenty of humorous one-liners, witty remarks, and silly moments. The cast all perform wonderfully, and I especially enjoyed John Oliver’s depiction of the skeptical, manipulative, professor of psychology. There were a few oddball moments which I found very amusing such as the random “remote control Christmas pterodactyl”. I also laughed pretty hard at the jab they took at the show "Lost". Like any good Christmas special, there are a number of songs featured in the episode. The songs are a nice addition and help to further the plot in an interesting way. The music itself is simple and works well as it doesn’t detract from the message of the song. The lyrics of each song are well written, and are often just as funny as the regular lines.

The choice of stop-motion animation was a great idea in my opinion. It brings both a refreshing ‘edge’ to the show and it also evoked a small sense of nostalgia as I grew up watching the many stop motion Christmas specials such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. As someone who watches Community regularly, the lack of actually seeing the actors’ real body language was a bit disconcerting at first but in no way impacted my enjoyment of the episode. Using stop-motion allowed for a greater ability to show things that would be very hard to pull off live and overall was very visually entertaining.

Watch the episode yourself tomorrow night,
Thursday December 9th @ 8pm EST/7pm CST on NBC.

~John

Disclosure: I was not compensated for this post but was given an advanced streaming episode of the show to watch. All opinions are that of the Author and 100% honest.

Have you ever texted "loudly" in your sleep? Well why not?

I just read a post over at This Is Mommyhood about her husband's sleeping habits that made me laugh and reminded me of my own sleep habits. I was younger I would have thought sleeping in separate bedrooms was some crazy thing people only do when they are no longer "in love" like they used to be. Now I'm older and realize it's what people do when they love their spouse enough to not want to divorce them for their crazy sleep habits. I personally regularly talk (in 2.5 different languages), eat (oh yes. then blame my left overs being missing on other people) and sing (everything from country to death metal) in my sleep. I have also been know to "loudly text" in my sleep... how you loudly text I have no idea. Either way it's nice to have another bed I can retreat to and bask in the knowledge my sleep craziness (or his. ::cough cough::) is not keeping us up all night. ;)

Thank you!

As some of you may know I took a job outside the home a few months back and Dave became the full time stay at home parent. Though this has greatly helped our budget, it has sort of hurt my spirits a bit. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the job! It's just being away from Elijah all day, missing his daily routine, the time spent together, our little fun mommy and baby things and missing the time to blog about him I had!

I am working diligently to catch up the blogging (with John's help! TY! TY!) and get in a better routine balancing the job and the home life again and promise that between now and Christmas you will see some awesome personal posts and more of my HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE!

I have had the pleasure of working with some amazing companies this past year and want to share more about them all with you! Thank you so much to all the companies that the time to get to know us here at Pyle of Love and share their products with us!

This past year has also been amazing seeing Elijah grow! I can't believe hes two and speaks in such intelligent and complete sentences you can understand! He knows letters, numbers, shapes, colors and continues to amaze me daily with his knowledge. His comprehension blows us all away! We have been asked numerous times if we are sure he's not really 4 years old! haha!

This past year has also been in amazing in the love and support shown from you dear friends, family and readers! Even if you don't comment I appreciate every single page view, especially considering I have been severely lacking on the content yet there are still over 2,000 of you that have visited already this month!!! If that's not motivation to write more and give you guys some new posts, I don't know what is!

So to EVERYONE I would like to give a HUGE HUG and a THANK YOU!

Tons of new posts coming! Just for you!

LEGO, the perfect holiday gift for all ages!

Looking for the perfect holiday gift? Click here to check out my newest toy column article to see all the hot LEGO holiday exclusive toys for this year available right now!

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme

TodaysMama and GameStop are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What is your holiday wish for your family?

That we are all happy and healthy and I actually am not working for 10 minutes to celebrate! lol!

2. What is your Christmas morning / Hanukkah Nightly tradition?

We all wake up and come to the living room to exchange gifts then we cook breakfast while Elijah plays with his presents.

3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be?

A new car! A Ford Edge!

4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money?

By doing the little things to show my family and friends that I love them.

5. What games did you play with your family growing up?

Monopoly!

6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood?

Putting useful items in stockings. There are toys and fun stuff but also new toothbrushes, socks, things like that. We do other stuff but I cant think of them right now. :)

7. Where would you go for a Christmas/Hanukkah-away-from-home trip?

Disney World would be amazing!

8. Check out GameStop and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year?

Any of you that know me know my GameStop wishlist is Llloooonnnggggg haha so picking the top 3 was hard. but...

• Xbox 360 250GB
• Resident Evil Magnum Bundle
• PSP 3000 Core Pack
  

5 Minutes for Mom Big Christmas Giveaway Extended

5 Minutes for Mom extended their Christmas Giveaways to give you a few extra days to enter. Just wanted to remind everybody there are some GREAT prizes to win and TODAY is the last day to enter. So hurry over and enter! Good Luck!

The 5 Minutes for Mom Christmas Giveaway now ends
Saturday, December 4th at 8pm EST.