my DK hit level 77 two days ago, and just hit 79 today. He is already revered with Sons of Hodir, and I haven't bought a single relic of ulduar from the auction house. I spent about 4 hours two days ago doing the initial quest chain and turned in about 10 relics (got most of them doing the quests, but have ~300 saved up from my regular team) and unlocked up to honored. It took me about one hour yesterday to unlock some more dailies. Today it took me exactly 25 minutes to do every Hodir daily possible, of course I have 2 shamans helping me burst stuff down - the collection quests go by fast when you grab 10 mobs and just D&D/magma totem them all down

I could spend ~2000g and buy relics to hit exalted tomorrow, but I'll probably do dailies for a week (good gold) and hit exalted that way. I did collect around 20 everfrost shards in the past 2 days, that helped a LOT - around 7k rep right there. In the evening when I am raiding on my main I am able to farm a bunch of everfrost shards and herbs in the area, the herbs alone should net me 1-2k gold when converted to glyphs or cards.

So anyways just wanted to say if you focus on one person at a time hitting exalted with Sons of Hodir is very easy, I've also already unlocked Argent Crusade and Vault in Icecrown, the only thing I skipped doing on my DK is the Sholozar factioning, after 2 months of getting a egg weekly on my team and getting zero, 0 proto drake mounts that whole area has left a bad taste in my mouth.