Christmas Gift Ideas | Simple + Quality + Minimalist

Each year I compile a list of gift ideas and I enjoy it SO much! I'm pretty much like Buddy from the movie Elf. We always get an early start on Christmas shopping to spread out the cost. This year is a bit different for us because it's our first Christmas as Catholics. I was surprised and excited to find out that Christmas is more than a day long celebration in the Catholic faith. We usually take our tree down late Christmas day or the day after Christmas and put it up before Halloween. Haha!

We are mostly following the Traditional Calendar... for us this means that our tree will be up through January, possibly until February 2nd - which is Candlemas. At the very earliest, it won't come down until the Baptism of the Lord. We haven't decided yet, but I'm excited either way. We will fully celebrate the season of waiting : Advent and then fully celebrate the season of Christmas! And we will be having our Christmas baby [baby number 5] on December 30th! So much to celebrate this year, so many blessings!

We used to keep to the "Something they want, need, wear, read" and then we would add something that would keep them active, like something for sports or something to play with outdoors. Sometimes we would buy a couple gifts from each category. We experimented with going way overboard in 2017 for Christmas and whoo boy... it was fun to watch them open but the kids actually prefer less things. It's overwhelming for them. Even if it was fun for us parents.

So we have found a middle ground. We focus on what they will actually love and use and don't do the four or five gift rule, but we definitely pared down from 2017. We keep in mind the words : simple, quality and minimalist. We don't want to just purchase junk and we don't want to over purchase.

Most of the following gifts are things we have purchased already this year for our children or that our children have owned or still own. All of these items have been heavily researched for hours through reviews and I just LOVE sharing what I find with you all! I will do a separate post on stocking stuffers and another on Catholic gifts from my fav small shops!

I also want to share that if you need to spread out the cost, we have used both Sezzle and AfterPay to do that. We have even done this with cloth diapers. No interest, no setup fee, quick and easy. I used Sezzle for Cotton Babies diapers for a large order and I used AfterPay for Sarah's Silks items for the kiddos this year. They have tons of stores! And, no, they're not paying me. Just thought I would share!

I hope that you all have a Merry Christmas this year! Enjoy!

Babies & Toddlers & Kids :