Category Archives: Christmas

Not in the mood

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I’m starting to panic.  I just realized that it is almost the middle of November.  Duh!  I’ve spent most weekends cleaning, decluttering, and trying to get the house in some order so I can relax more in December.

nov-2013

The past several years I’ve done what I call Christmas Wishes.  It’s the same thing as an Advent calendar where a person opens something everyday starting December 1st, be it a reflection, small token, ornament, or treat.  It started out with anything under $1 such as a free pencil or emery board though sometimes I included a booklet of stamps or a gift card.  It was fun for my adult children and their spouses.

Then grandkids came along so I included them.  The adults got dropped like a hot potato.

Last year I gave each family a small artificial Christmas tree and each day was an ornament for the tree and a sweet treat.  I made those “sour cream” packages for the ornaments.  Cute but time-consuming.

christmas-Wishes-2012

Yes, it’s mid-November and I haven’t started on getting these put together.  It take a long time to do this and I need to have them ready by Thanksgiving.

I was thinking of doing the same thing with the ornaments but also adding an ornament making craft every few days.  Such as candy cane reindeer:

ccane

Or these candy cane mice from Martha Stewart:

ccmice

I just have to force myself to get in the mood.

Felt

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There are a few definitions for the word “felt” and I’m going to talk about a couple of them today.

Mr. Aitch and our daughter have strep throat.  Mr. Aitch was at her house last week so they probably were exposed to it at the same time.  They felt pretty badly on Monday and Tuesday but feel better today after taking the right medication.

A couple of years ago I tried my hand at making felt Christmas ornaments.  I ran out of time.  Thinking about doing something is not the same as actually doing it.

So I am reviving that project.

felt-1

I have a few shapes cut out already.  Now comes the embellishing part.  I printed out some of my Pinterest pins from my Felt board for inspiration.  (You may need to join Pinterest (for free) to see that.)

pins

Sorry for the poor quality in these photos.  I was in a hurry and the lighting wasn’t good.  Plus all I had was my iPad camera.  Excuses, excuses.

I’m also working on my original  felted  CCM hat.

hat-1

I still wear it with only the one partial paisley embroidered on it.  It’s very warm.  And I love it with or without the paisley.

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I knit another one last spring and have not felted it yet.  The yarn sheds.  And I mean S.H.E.D.S.  I was afraid to felt the hat in the washing machine as I didn’t want to plug up the hose so I used a new plunger and bucket of hot water to felt the first hat.  It was quite the workout!!  It was too hot this summer to engage in that activity so I waited until it got cooler.

hats

What’s stopping me from felting this new hat?

I just haven’t felt like it.

Key the music

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…to the Twilight Zone.

First of all a belated Very Merry Christmas to you!

Now let’s back track to Saturday when my dryer stopped working.  The repairman came on Monday and it was going to cost $$$ to repair it.  The dryer was 19 years old so I think it served us well.

I had too many things to do on Monday to shop for a new dryer like bake 2 cheese cakes, finish the sweater for the twins, wrap the rest of the presents, and prepare our Christmas Eve dinner.

The cheese cakes got done as well as the present wrapping and our delicious dinner.  The sweater, not so much.  But I had all Christmas day to finish it.  And I did.  At 10:30 pm.  It was wrapped and ready to go to its new owner this morning.snowy-road

Mr. Aitch and I drove 15 miles of the 117 miles to our daughters house when we decided it was too treacherous to continue. We had several inches of snow and the roads were too bad even with 4-wheel drive.  We turned around and headed home.

That photo is I-68 and we just got on.  We had mountains to cross and it was only going to get worse.  We never saw a plow truck nor evidence that they were out and about.

We decided to make a detour and shop for a new dryer.  Found one, made the purchase, set up the delivery date and went home.

Later this afternoon the delivery company called to check on the delivery date for a washing machine.  What?  I didn’t buy a washer.  But there it was in black and white on the receipt: a washing machine.

The delivery company called the store to see what happened and called me back to verify that a dryer would be delivered.  I called the store to see what happened and the salesman didn’t remember the transaction at all.  Really?  He sold that much today that he didn’t remember our dryer?  Maybe he just had too much Christmas celebrating going on.  When I gave him my address, he remembered.

It’s all straightened out but man, was it a weird day.  Mr. Aitch said it felt like we were in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Too bad I don’t know how to embed the theme song.

Spirit

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For some reason I am in the Christmas spirit.front-door-1.2011

You may think I’m nuts for saying that but the past 10-12-14 years, I have not had much of the Christmas spirit in me.  Last year I put a wreath on the door and hung out the garland on the front porch but no other decorating inside until I found out some friends were coming over.  I rushed to The Barn two days before Christmas and bought a 6 foot tall “primitive” tree at 40% off.  Used a few choice ornaments from my collection and called it Christmas.  Bah humbug.

While I’m in the Christmas decorating spirit, I better do something about it!