It's a Woot! Christmas....

It's Cathy Mitchell's fault....really. She was making all of these amazing meals in minutes with her Xpress101 and held Bethany and I spellbound for a full half hour. And--yes--i confess, I picked up the phone. I got almost all the way through the order process until I was shell shocked back into sanity by the high cost of shipping & handling.

It got me thinking. I'm not the only one.

Infomercials produce about 1.5 billion in sales each year. I quote this statistic not only to justify my loss of 30 minutes to Ms. Mitchell, but also to tell you about last year's Christmas shopping adventure. I couldn't help myself. If I was that susceptible I figured my family and friends were too. And so, I pulled out my credit card and did it. Everyone on our gift list received something sold on TV. We got the buttoneer for Karen, the BeDazzler for Elissa, the Popeil Pocket Fisherman for Troy, Pasta Magic for my mom (and me). The list went on and on. Depending on the price of the gift, some got multiples, but all followed the theme. (I even did these cute 1950's golden-age-of-television gift tags and wrapped them all in turquoise paper.)

This year, I have a new shopping passion. Woot.com. One deal each day. Primarily personal electronics. The beauty of this shopping strategy is it actually makes life easier. No crowds. No wanting to creatively annihilate the woman who cut me off in the parking lot. The gamble is that Woot will have something that matches each person on our list. So far, we have four weeks to Christmas and are only halfway through.

I'm hoping for a Woot Off...