Snail Mail

I'm one of those people who still sends "snail mail," and around Christmastime every year we'll usually cart a two-inch-tall stack of holiday cards out to the mailbox. Even when I'm over my head with other things around the place, I'll carve out time to sit down and send a few cards.

I'm also forever haunting the mailbox at about the halfway point in December, watching for those few cards I'll get in return from friends and family who are also those types...

...and I'm happy to say they never disappoint. Shout-out to Mimmy and Pappy, Cousin Rachel, and our friends the Stone Family, who all tie for First Christmas Card Received this year. Henry opened every one and loved them, and I'm happy to say when it comes to keeping snail mail alive, I think he may become One Of Us, too!

Weekending

Let's see... what are normal people doing at the halfway point in December? Probably not plumbing, digging (and then filling in) ditches, cleaning up drywall chunks and broken glass, or fretting over soil saturation, huh?

OK then, we have some catching up to do. Let's start with the baking part of our "usual" tradition.

Yep. That's much better.

Happy weekending!

Milestone

A momentous day today: let the record show we connected our house to our own well today.

It is finished.

Visiting :: Sea Life Aquarium

Audrey went on a field trip last week to the Sea Life Aquarium with her school. I chaperoned, and yikes is it stressful to be in charge of other people's kids in a chaotic public space. But anyho, a good time was had by all, and I was actually surprised by the place- it's in an outlet mall and my expectations were not very high, but it was not bad at all.

The kids had fun, the teachers had everything running like a well-oiled machine, and we got to sign out early and go have lunch at a special restaurant before heading home... it was a good day trip.

Halls Decked... Check.

We finally buckled down and decorated the place this weekend. The kids went out of town to stay with their grandparents and Mama and Daddy pulled a multi-hour marathon to get the tree inside, the boxes out of storage, the garlands unfurled, and the stockings hung. When the Littles came home at the end of their busy weekend away, everything was up and waiting on their little finishing touches. 

Aaaaaaaaaand of course, we saved all the tree ornaments for them!

We got an exceptionally tall tree this year (most years we've had one in the 6-7' range, and this year ours is close to 10' including the stand), and the kids were thrilled to be able to use the ladder to hang ornaments. I was worried we wouldn't have enough to fill up the extra square footage, but with a few pine cones and poinsettias for filler, we pulled it off.

The kids stayed motivated to help for the entire project, because when the tree is finished the train can come out!

I'm feeling pretty good about our holiday prep now... I haven't really felt in the spirit because quite frankly I've been in denial- like, it can't be the second week in December already. Impossible.  But now our tree is up and twinkling, and I've worked through my favorite Christmas playlist from beginning to end, so yeah, I guess this is really happening. It's just around the corner.

Now that my house looks the part, I'm finally ready to get in the swing of things. Sssssssssooooo... what's next? Cookie baking? Gift wrapping? Stocking stuffing?

Yup, let's do this.

Right Now

How is it Thursday already? This week has me feeling totally upside-down. I seriously sat down this morning to write a post about Tuesday goings-on.

*ahem*

SO right now, on this Thursday, I'm...

...eating kraut broca (made this time with good pasture-raised pork sausage) for breakfast alongside my coffee.

...feeling saturated by the smell of turkey stock slowly cooking down in the kitchen, where it's been since about 2pm yesterday (wanna can your own, too? great tutorial here).
...planning a day of holiday making, with the beginning of some projects that may take me the rest of the month to complete (maybe I shouldn't be such a procrastinator with the big stuff?). Also appreciating this list of suggestions in case my big project fails.

...prepping for the Bringing In Of The Tree. The kids and I went to scope out what the big-box home supply stores had right now in the way of bigger, taller trees, and we ended up bringing home a pretty tree in the 9-10' range (the hubs wanted the gigantic 14-footer in the back, with the 9' diameter, but standing in it's shadow I decided it just wasn't the one for us...). I barely got it off the top of my car and into a bucket of water and there it still sits, waiting for someone with more muscle and leverage to bring it into the house. Hopefully it'll happen this weekend.
...looking forward to my girl's "fine arts night" tonight where she'll sing a holiday song with her class and have some kind of art project on display. Thinking maybe we need a little something like one of these waiting for us when we get back home!
...also looking forward to the opening of the holiday outings season this weekend with the hubs' company Christmas party!

Around our neck of the woods the sun has finally joined us again, the to-do lists include fun stuff intermingled with the usual (today we're making cinnamon spiced cake balls!), and there's a weekend fast approaching that'll contain something other than house projects! Can't complain about that!

Ssssshhh... Holiday Makin'

True to our usual, we've been sneaking in crafty making goodness for a while now, mainly because I'm a planner and planning ahead is what I do, but also because I'm a sssslooooow maker and starting way ahead of time is the only way I could ever gift anything homemade for the holidays.

There's not a lot of how-to I can share in this space at this point, but there are a few teaser peaks I can post without giving away too much...

After all the surprises have done their surprising and the wrappings have settled, I'll come back to these projects and share a few links for inspiration, in case anyone wants to know! But until then, sssssssshhhhhhhhh!