Holiday shopping: I've broken my own rule

  When it comes to the holiday season I am a traditionalist. I like to do all of my shopping during what I think of as the holiday season: Black Friday through Christmas Eve. This year however I have broken my own 'rule'. A couple of weeks ago the school I work at had the Scholastic book fair where I purchased a couple of books for my grandsons J & L (although L is too little to enjoy them yet, J can eventually share these with him). Then after browsing the internet for pricing on some ideas I'd gotten from a few of my adult/college/teen children I came across a couple of ideas that had such excellent prices (and free shipping) that I felt I needed to take advantage of the savings and I ordered them.
Over the summer the GF had filled my SUV several times and fronted all of the money for our waterpark passes as well as picking up the bill for the hotel for my oldest stepdaughter's wedding in June. I still owed  him for my half of the hotel and waterpark and the gasoline. We've agreed I will purchase Christmas gifts until what would be his half of the cost equals what I owe him in return. My little Christmas shopping expedition online plus a couple of birthday gifts I picked up for  him yesterday for his godchild and her sister and I am halfway to paying him back!
As for gifts GF and I sat down and decided that instead of putting a limit on the number of gifts we'd buy (4 has been our number in the past) this year we'd get the bigger ticket items and give fewer gifts (2-3). We are going for quality over quantity and still expect to keep within our respective shopping budgets.
In other holiday thoughts I have gone through and given a look-see to my current holiday decorations. I would very much like to replace a couple of outdoor decorations that died within the last couple of years with something new but have yet to make a definite decision on this. I do need to pick up batteries for the window 'candles' and will probably have to replace lights (seems like each year I put them away and they work fine then when I hang them up either they don't work at all or only half the strand lights <sigh>) so this may be the extent of my decoration shopping.
And speaking of decorating, I managed to put away all of the Halloween decorations and replace them with my Thanksgiving ones!