I’ll be the first to admit that I was out of control. I’m just getting over a recent obsession – the obsession to find the perfect Christmas gift for Camille.
I know it’s crazy, because I should enjoy these last few years where she’ll be happy with whatever Santa leaves beneath the tree. She’s not firing off letters to the North Pole demanding a Nintendo Wii or a Tickle Me Elmo Xtreme or a pony. I should relax.
When we were visiting Nikki last month and we saw how much Camille LOVED the kids’ playhouse, Lee and I knew she needed one. Seemed like the perfect Christmas gift. I wasn’t too worried about finding one because I knew I’d seen displays in our local toys r us with plenty of playhouses – so closer to Christmas we would just go get one. Right?
Wrong. Apparently, as we found out last week, our local stores don’t stock playhouses this time of year. Since most of them are designed to be outdoor toys, I understand that they might be more popular during the summer. But this is Christmas! A time for toy stores to stock up on their big toys! And it’s Savannah for-crying-out-loud where the temps have been in the 80s for the last week.
Ok – no problem, I told myself. We’ll just order one online.
We did some browsing and found out Amazon.com doesn’t offer free shipping on this particular type of item. Great. Neither does Toys R Us. Neither does Target. Oh wait – WalMart does! But only on the super-expensive playhouses. No thanks.
How bad could shipping be? Well, we selected one $99 playhouse and calculated the shipping… a whopping $117. For shipping alone. More than doubling my $99 purchase. I mean, I understand the item is big, but does Santa have to add another reindeer or something? Or have the prices of corn gone up so much he has to pass the expenses for feeding his reindeer on down to the parents? Bah humbug!
That’s when my obsession began. I HAD to have a playhouse, and I HAD to have free shipping or find one locally I could pick up. I called every store I could think of that might have one in stock. No luck. Not in Savannah, not in nearby cities either.
Every spare moment I had was spent on the computer searching for 1) an awesome playhouse, 2) at a good price, 3) with free shipping.
Finally, amid one of my bleary-eyed google searches I stumbled upon allchildrensfurniture.com. They offer free shipping on items over $39, no apparent strings attached.
They had several cute playhouses that were, of course, out of stock. But there was one – one glorious playhouse – that just might fit our needs.

I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite of all the choices I’ve seen out there so I hesitated for a moment, but realized my obsession needed to come to an end. It’s a good price and shipping is free and I think she’ll enjoy it.
So I made the purchase, feeling quite relieved when I got the final confirmation screen with no shipping surprises. I kept waiting for one of those last second messages like, “Sorry! This item no longer qualifies for free shipping…” But that didn’t happen, thank goodness, so I’m feeling much better about life. Unfortunately, the playhouse may not get delivered in time for Christmas morning, but at some point I had to be at peace with the purchase. We’re not even going to be at home Christmas morning, and I’ll take advantage of the fact that Camille won’t know if she gets her present a few days late.
I can’t believe I let myself get that stressed out over a Santa present for a 16-month-old. Next year, we’ll start our Santa search much earlier. Lesson learned.