Catching up

Now that I finally have the ability to post pictures I thought I'd catch up on the things I wanted to share, but couldn't.

First, we have the snow that we woke up to back in November.

This is actually looking out to the main road near our house.  It never did get plowed.

Some of the snow covered trees down the street.

 There's a chance of snow again later today, which I'm not too excited about because I have to actually go somewhere tomorrow.  If it doesn't snow, all of the rain we've had today should still turn to ice.  Oh boy. 

Secondly, I have pictures of some of the Christmas cards I made and sent out this year.  I used my Cricut to cut a lot of the shapes that I used.  The first one is embossed.  I used a really pretty stamp that I got in a set from Michaels.  Unfortunately, I can't remember who makes it and my packaging is gone.  Some also have other embellishments that I bought.

This cut comes from the Lyrical Letters cartridge.

These were cut from Joys of the Season

Now that I can share pictures I'll be trying to post a lot more crafts to share along with photos of completed items on my 101 in 1001 list. 

My Christmas

My Christmas was fantastic.  On Christmas Eve my mom and her boyfriend came up to celebrate with DH and I.  Despite feeling sick all day (I think I might have a garlic allergy), I still had a pretty good day.  We watched Horton Hears a Who and sat around talking.  DH made an amazing herb crusted pork loin.  I didn't eat any at dinner because I still wasn't feeling well, but I had some later and it was really good.  It's been added to our regular dinner list.

DH and I spent Christmas morning together and opened our gifts to each other and then relaxed and played with our new stuff for the morning.  It was wonderful to not feel rushed to get somewhere.  We've never had that before but this year we made sure to set aside some time to ourselves. 

Then in the afternoon we went to my in-laws' house and opened presents with them and had a nice turkey dinner and played a couple games.  We got to hear from DH's cousin, who is now living back east so we haven't seen him in a long time.  We watched Christmas movies and spent the afternoon hiding inside because it was pouring rain. 

Even though it wasn't exactly the Christmas we had been hoping for (our plans changed about 30 times in the month leading up to Christmas), we still had a wonderful holiday.  I hope everyone else did too. 

Merry Christmas

I will be taking a break until after Christmas.  I hope anyone reading this has a wonderful Christmas full of joy and love.  I will return with a summary of our Christmas and hopefully some fun crafty stuff to share. 

I have no self-control

As it turns out, finishing my Christmas shopping so early is dangerous for me.  I saw so many gifts that I wanted to get for people, but kept telling myself that I was done and had hit my budget so I couldn't and shouldn't buy anymore gifts.  Until today.  I was on Amazon and found a great gift for DH so I had to order it.  Fortunately I'm out of time to do that with anything else. 

3 Days!

We are completely ready for Christmas now.  All of the gifts are wrapped (I wrapped my own after DH put them in boxes) and under the tree.  The house is clean and ready for guests.  I have done my final grocery shopping trip until after Christmas.  Now I just need a nap. 

I can't wait to celebrate Christmas with my husband.

Christmas treats

I spent my day baking and dipping marshmallows into chocolate.  I originally was going to make enough to send snacks to work with DH and still have some leftover for me to bring to work.  That didn't happen.  I was trying to avoid going to the store today and I thought I only had enough butter for one batch of each thing.  As it turns out, I cut out the lemon bars I'd been planning to make so I could have doubled up on the snickerdoodles and had more to bring in.  The snickerdoodles are packaged to go to work with DH tomorrow.  I'd rather share with the people he works with than where I work.  I've snacked on a few and they are delicious. 

I also tried to make brownies, but the recipe I used refused to bake properly.  The edges are really hard and when I cut into it the center is still undercooked.  The recipe (I used the Hershey one) said to bake at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes.  I had the right temperature and probably ended up baking for 40-45 minutes and they still aren't done correctly so I ate one of the edge pieces, but I'll probably throw the rest out.  I also dipped an entire bag of large marshmallows into chocolate.  Those will also go into the packages for DH's coworkers. 

This will probably be the first year that I haven't made Christmas cookies.  Growing up my mom and I would always make cutout sugar cookies and frost them together.  I loved doing that.  The recipes have changed now that I'm older (I don't use shortening so I don't use the one I grew up with), but I still love the tradition of it.  I just don't have the time this year.

What sort of goodies are you making this year? 

International Mail

I got my Christmas cards out in the mail on Monday (most of them anyway).  One of those Christmas cards is traveling all the way to Switzerland to see my wonderful cousin.  She's been living over there for a couple months now and is supposed to be there for about a year.  While I'm bummed that she's not around I can still talk to her through email and text messages (she will also hopefully be coming for a visit this summer).  Plus, I know this is a good experience for her. 

Sending that card to her was the first time I've sent mail to another country.  I really thought it would be more expensive, especially after looking up the price to send her a package of cookies.  It was 98 cents to send the letter.  The cookies would have cost me about 40 so she'll have to wait until she comes home.  I couldn't believe it.  Less than a dollar to send a letter thousands of miles.  If I'd known that I would have already sent her a couple letters. 

She's like me and loves to get mail that isn't junk or a bill.  When I was in college she would occasionally send me letters.  Once she tried to send me some Andes mints along with the letter and it got completely chewed up by the mail sorter machine.  My letter came to me in a ziploc bag.  My Christmas card to her did not include chocolate (she's in Switzerland --she has much better options there), and should be greeting her sometime early next week. 

I'm ready!

I have spent a little bit of time each day wrapping Christmas presents and I'm finally done.  All of my online orders are in and everything is wrapped, including one gift to me from DH.  I told him what I wanted and was even with him to pick it up so I went ahead and wrapped it for him.  Now we just need to decorate the tree so they have a place to go. 

Christmas Decorations

DH and I spent our day getting ready for Christmas.  For the first time since we've lived together (this is the fourth Christmas) we decorated our house with Christmas lights.  We've never lived in a place where it would actually work and/or we weren't afraid they would be stolen.  We put up a ton of lights and our house looks awesome.  Even our neighbor mentioned how much he liked it.  Unfortunately, I still don't have a way to get photos to my computer, so I'm unable to share the awesomeness. 

After we finished that we decided to go get our Christmas tree.  I have to say that my house smells amazing.  I love the smell of a Christmas tree.  We haven't decorated yet, but we plan to tomorrow and after that I can put all of the Christmas presents under it.  I haven't finished yet, but my craft room is full of wrapped presents just waiting to hide under the tree until Christmas.  I thought I was done, but I thought of another gift that I'd like to get for DH so I think I might head out tomorrow and pick it up at the store.  He has more than enough this year, but I know it's something he would love and it's small enough for me to count it as a stocking stuffer. 

I did it!

I finished my Christmas shopping by December 1st!  I really didn't think I'd make it, but everything is either hiding in the closet or on it's way from Amazon.  Now I'm ready to decorate and enjoy the Christmas season.  I also need to start planning our Christmas celebration because it looks like we are going to be able to host it this year. 

How far has your shopping got?  Did you set any goals for this year? 

Christmas update

I'm almost done shopping.  I figured out a gift to get for my brother-in-law and we ordered gifts for just about everyone this morning.  Just one little thing for my in-laws and then I have to finish my mom and my husband (who I've got quite a few ideas for) and I'm done.  Probably won't be done by Wednesday (though it's possible), but at least I'll be done early.  I'm really excited about some of the gifts we got this year. 

Holidays

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun.  We actually had two dinners.  On Thanksgiving we went to my mom's.  Her boyfriend BBQed a turkey and it was delicious.  I'm not usually a big fan of turkey, but I really liked his.  Then, because my brother-in-law had to work on Thanksgiving, we had a second dinner on Friday with DH's parents and brother.  It was also fun.  We played Monopoly (which I won) and Trivial Pursuit (which my father-in-law won). 

Unfortunately, the sugar free pumpkin pie that I posted about never actually got eaten.  On Wednesday night we left for my mom's house and after we'd been there for an hour or so I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten the pie.  I thought about it when we were getting ready, but I didn't want to leave it unrefrigerated for too long and I forgot to grab it before we left.  So she had to make another one on Thanksgiving morning.  It was a similar recipe and her boyfriend's dad sure seemed to like it so I guess it's a good recipe.  I planned to take it over to my in-laws for Thanksgiving because my father-in-law would eat it, but I forgot it on that trip too because I was so excited about Black Friday and going out to lunch with my husband that it slipped my mind.  So there's still a mini sugar free pumpkin pie in my fridge that I don't think will ever get eaten. 

Today, we got a new dishwasher (the last one stopped cleaning dishes) so while my husband worked on that with the maintenance guy I spent my morning ordering Christmas presents.  I got a pretty good amount for DH and I've got a pretty good shopping cart going for the rest of our families.  I even managed to find a real gift for my dad for the first time in 10 years.  Every other year I can't come up with anything for him that he will actually care about so he gets food.  This year I have something good. 

All I need now is for DH to double check it and let me know which gift he wants to get for his brother and I'm good to go.  There are a few things I will need to go into town to get so I don't know if those will be done by my goal, but I'll at least be done early this year and that makes me very happy.  I hate dealing with Christmas crowds and I plan to spend my Christmas season sitting inside my nice warm house enjoying my tree instead of stressed out and running around town. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!  Yes, I know it's early, but tomorrow I'll be stuffing myself on a barbecued turkey and I won't be thinking about updating my blog. 

This year, I'm thankful for my husband (this is the first year I can say that) and for the job he got a few months ago that got us out of the awful town we were living in and allowed us to move to a place we love.  What are you thankful for this year?

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to have my Christmas shopping done by the 1st.  I could order a lot of it this weekend.  I could even go out on Black Friday and get a couple things (which I plan on doing anyway), but there are a couple people that I haven't finalized my gift list for yet so I don't want to just buy something neither of us will be happy with just to hit my goal.  It also doesn't help that this next week is very busy.  So I'll just stick with trying to be done early in December and aim for my goal next year.  I'm so close this year that I think I'll have it easily by next year. 

Donations

I donated to Toys for Tots last night.  Borders has a program going on right now so that at check out they ask if you'd like to donate a kids' book to Toys for Tots.  They have a ton of options and it looked like they were all under $5.  I donated one and so did my mother-in-law.  I love that they're including books.  Reading is so good for children and the younger they start the more likely they are to continue reading throughout their life.  I hope that I can incorporate a Toys for Tots gift into my Christmas shopping from now on.  We never really had enough money before.  I'd love it to be a tradition that we have with our own children to donate to other kids who might not have anything else on Christmas. 

First Gifts

I officially have my first Christmas gifts purchased and it's not even Thanksgiving!  I only bought a couple things last night because I can get better deals for most of it online, but I'm halfway done with my brother-in-law and my father-in-law.  I know what I'm getting for everyone else except for my husband.  I'm feeling good about this year.  

Making Progress

I'm going to try to get my Christmas shopping done before December 1st this year.  I'm not sure if I'll make it.  Some people on our list are difficult to buy for, but I have a significant portion ready to go.  My mother-in-law and I are going shopping tomorrow.  By the end of tomorrow I'll have her and my father-in-law done (she won't be in the store when I buy her gift).  I should also have something for my brother-in-law and I might even have a couple ideas for my mom (which never happens). 

I've spent the last few hours looking for ideas online and it looks like I'll be purchasing a lot from Amazon too.  I love Amazon, especially the free shipping they offer on a lot of items.  If I had all of my ideas finalized I'd be purchasing a huge order from them tonight.  But I'm going to wait so that I can get free shipping (or as least as low as I can get it).  I'm also curious to see what deals I can get on Black Friday (not that there are a ton of options here) and Cyber Monday. 

So tomorrow I'm hoping that the storm holds off and I'm able to get a ton of shopping done.  Wish me luck.  Where do you stand on your Christmas shopping?  Trying to hit any goals this year?