Monday, November 22, 2010

Christmas is Coming

CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!!!!!!!!!

You know how I can tell? I'm listening to Christmas music right now! Granted, if I had my way that's all I would listen to from September on... but I digress.
This weekend was a bit of a flurry with lots of commitments, lots of phone calls and a load of cleaning, but amid all that we did manage to pull out some seasonal decor and find my favorite Christmas CD (Nat King Cole). So while I haven't really decorated for Christmas yet, (no lights up, no tree and 6 boxes of decorations untouched in the crawl space) we do have our candy cane made of bells hanging on our door, our wreath is up and I've rotated out the decor in the main bathroom from orchids to mini presents and red berries. I also have a vase in the living room that housed rocks and a stem of fake orchids which now holds some frosted pine cones (which I bought for $3.50 on Saturday. Seriously, who buys pine cones?)
I'm not allowed to decorate until the house is clean (my rule, not Matt's) so fortunately, given the weather forecast, I'll have lots of time to do that this week. Incidentally, how do you explain to a child under the age of 2 what -30 with a wind chill means? All morning Gabe has been bringing me his boots asking for me to put them on so that we can go out. Not in this weather however. I'd be happy to not leave the house for the next two or three days, or however long it takes to warm up. If I am staying housebound however, I may need to track down a couple more Christmas cd's - mainly the Carpenter's Christmas and Amy Grant. Thank goodness for iTunes, eh?
I am pleased to say that I am nearly done Christmas shopping for Gabe, I have one of my three presents for Matt and only have one other person to buy for and other than that I've spent all the money I plan to spend this Christmas. The rest of my presents shall be, as I have mentioned before, inspired and homemade. I am getting a bit tight on time however, so I'll need to really crack down on the knitting and baking to get it all done. Fortunately, I have a habit of power baking once I get started so I'll probably get all my Christmas baking done in two days. Oh, and one of Martha Stewart's articles last month was on finding one basic cookie dough and manipulating it into a dozen (or more) different varieties of cookie so I might give that a go this year. I'll make 3 or 4 batches of the dough, do one up with earl grey tea, one with chocolate and maybe some nuts, one with a cherry swirl through it, and ice the other ones. Wouldn't that be fast and fun? Still, there are some things I have to make just because I only do them at Christmas: Peanut Butter balls dipped in chocolate and coconut, Shortbread, some type of toffee or candy and I might have to break down and bake my traditional 9 dozen sugar cookies (I freeze them and they do for the rest of the year, or until summer at least - it depends if Matt finds where they are in the deep freeze).
Anyway, I slept in today and haven't been very productive this morning (short of the normal productivity of feeding and caring for an 18 month old) so I'd best get cleaning, because when I'm done, I get to decorate! Yay!

Mrs. Vander Leek

P.S. This has been on my heart alot lately - particularly yesterday - "I will sing of Your mercy that leads me through valleys of sorrow to rivers of joy - Hallelujah"

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