12 Days of Christmas

Each year for Christmas growing up, my siblings and I would draw names and whomever we chose is who we gave a gift to for Christmas. As the family grew the tradition eventually had a few changes and has now evolved into all of the nieces and nephews choosing each other's names and all of the adults choosing each other's names, my parents included.

This past Christmas I chose my mom. Since I'm not married, I consider my parents my family unit and get them gifts anyways, so I wanted to do something a little extra for my mom and decided on... drum roll please... The 12 days of Christmas. It wasn't easy thinking of something for each day and it was even harder not giving any clue it was me, but it was so much fun to do for her.

Since people I are sometimes sharing ideas on blogs, I thought I would share this:

Preparations:
A a lot of Googling went on for ideas. I found other blogs of people who have done this and looked at their list of ideas. Did I make a budget... nope. Probably should have but it was my mom, I was ok splurging a little. But I did hit up Target's $1 bins, looked for sales on candy, searched for coupons, and more.
When I was compiling each gift, I was so scared my mom might see scraps of ribbon or empty bags of candy bags in my trash and trace it back to me, so I hid a grocery sack under my bed and put any trash related to the gifts in the bag and waited until AFTER christmas to dispense of the evidence. A little over the top? Oh well!
I also found some cute 12-days of Christmas tags on the internet and tied them to each gift with a golden ribbon.

You can find them here.

The Delivery of the Gifts:
This was a feat in itself but I decided to recruit helpers. I asked each of my siblings, with kids, if their kids would like to do it, just so they could have a little fun and be a part of it. I asked two girls, who are about high school aged, who live in our circle to deliver a bunch of them. I even gave them a little schedule oh which gifts needed to be delivered which days. And then I did the rest of the deliveries. Probably the funniest thing was the nights that I was home and the gifts were delivered, which was perfect because how could she suspect me, my mom would be out running errands or doing her Christmas shopping.
At first my mom was hesitant to receive the gifts, she felt bad and was nervous because she didn't want someone spending so much money on her. Then she started to get excited as each gift came and to see what new clever thing Secret Santa could come up with. THEN the later gifts started to get a little expensive and she got nervous again. Read on to see her reaction when she finally figured out it was me.

The Days:
1st day of Christmas my true love sent to me, a partridge in a pair tree. This one was a stretch, I got a bag of green and yellow MM's from Zurchers and mixed them together. The idea was, in my head, the green ones were the leaves of a tree and the yellow ones were the birds in the tree. Like I said, a stretch.

2 Turtle Doves - Mint Milk Chocolate Dove candies
3 French Hens - A loaf of French bread
4 Calling Birds - The sound track from Little Women. My only idea with this one was that I needed to get my mom a Christmas CD and I decided Little Women because a lot of the story is based during Christmas time and the soundtrack is beautiful. Well, my mom also noticed the story is about four girls and she kept raving on how clever it was that her Secret Santa thought of Little Women for FOUR calling birds. Ha! Also! I ordered the CD from Amazon and it arrived with a crack across the entire case. Let me just tell you, Amazon's return policies and procedures are awesome and I had a non-cracked CD case at my door just a few days later.

5 Golden Rings - A tiny Santa bag from the Target $1 bin filled with Werthers candies. As it is not very exciting to receive these candies, I also hid bit size Hershey's with Almond bars in golden wrappers underneath the Werthers.
6 Geese a Laying - 6 eggs with some omelet mixings: tomato, onions, and mushrooms.
7 Swans a Swimming - 7 folded origami swans. This was not easy!
8 Maids a Milking - Dish rags. She was in desperate need.
9 Ladies Dancing - A gift card for a pedicure, you know, for dancing toes.
10 Lords a Leaping - Tickets to Ballet West's Beauty and the Beast.
11 Pipers Piping - Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Cookie Sticks.
12 Drummer Drumming - a framed sign that said, "Repeat the Sounding Joy."
My mom and I had watch The Family Stone a few weeks earlier and there is a part in the movie when everyone in the family is in each of their beds and the house is quiet and it's snowing outside and everyone is quietly humming to themselves Joy to the World. Then one of the family members sings quietly to herself, "Repeat the Sounding Joy" and my mom said she really liked that. She's never thought about highlighting that part of the song but she really liked it. So! I asked my sister-in-law who is a graphic designer if she would make me the sign and she ended up liking it so much that she now sells it on her Etsy shop.

The funniest part of the last gift was, earlier on Christmas before we had opened gifts and were eating dinner, I told my siblings about how a friend of mine and her sisters have a competition on Mother's Day who can give their mom the card that is so tender and sweet that it makes her cry. Their mom has no idea. Well, my mom opened the framed "Repeat the Sounding Joy" and then realized it was me and burst into tears and the rest of the family burst into laughter.

Probably the best part was doing something for such an extraordinary woman. My mom is constantly thinking of others and even goes above and beyond when she doesn't need to, so it was fun to do the same for her.