Christmas Has Past

Another Christmas has come & gone, and I'm left with such a surreal feeling. I begin gearing up for this day starting somewhere in October, usually when my Christmas Club check arrives. I revisit mental lists for who might like what, but I hold off on the actual shopping until after Black Friday for the most part. Specifically, I wait for Cyber Monday & do most of my shopping online. Luckily, many places have jumped onto this online-shopping bandwagon & extend their sale prices and/or free shipping to the entire Black Friday weekend AND the week following. 

Typically our holiday season goes like this: 

*Thanksgiving dinner here at our house on Thanksgiving day

*Black Friday is actually a sleep-in day here & we start bringing Christmas decoration bins down from the 3rd floor

*Fri/Sat are decorating days, to include the house & trees (we had two this year)

*Sunday is my day of rest (my self-imposed day off because I've found moms who work at home really don't get days off otherwise!)

*The first couple weeks of December are such fun as all my purchases begin to appear via UPS!

*The week before Christmas is when I sift through the mound of delivered boxes, separate them to make sure everything has arrived, and begin wrapping

*Several days before Christmas I start baking cookies

*A couple days before Christmas I "start" some cleaning (since having a smelly, hairy, messy beast of a lab induces the same mentality with cleaning as I had with small children~ because they're constantly messing up things as you're cleaning them up, I basically have to clean last minute for a possibility of it staying clean until guests arrive!)

So the Christmas festivities passed mostly without a hitch except:

1) I forgot to make the corn AND green beans for our Christmas ham dinner! Oops!! My MIL brought Ambrosia so at least there was a type of fruit in there.

2) Smokey the lab knocked the big Christmas tree in the family room down TWICE, and so I got to do A LOT of decorating this year!!

My heart hurt the most on Christmas Eve. I felt the first crush when I realized church services were under way. I've not been able to attend church regularly since burying Montie (nor before, but that's a different issue) and I always feel the missing of that service in particular. The second heart squeeze was felt after we'd sent the girls upstairs so "Santa" could come ~ knowing Montie could *only* be here in spirit as we celebrated the next day.  

I'll not be sharing any New Year's resolutions because I don't believe in them. 

Things can change with a blink of an eye, and every day is a new start.

But I can offer with a heartfelt wish that this year could be more fruitful, more joyous, and more fulfilling in ways we haven't even discovered yet...

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

A few snapshots from December...

With my sewing room still under renovation, I've claimed an unused smaller room to sew in temporarily. My fabric is separated into boxes, and as you can see, the kitties like to keep me company.

Unwrapping kisses for peanut butter blossoms (the funky gloves are due to my chopping off the very tip of my finger/nail bed using a rotary cutter!)

A very small sampling of cookies baked this year.

This one might be a repeat? The kittens are getting stronger & venturing further up the trees.

Santa left presents! 

On of my favorite gifts this year was given by Morgan! Sorry about the blurry picture. 

MY MASTERPIECE!! Praline Pumpkin Cake~ yes it was as delicious as it looks!!

Managed to get everyone in who attended.

4rth of July Weekend

Got lots done & had some fun over the long weekend:

Every summer I take off the books, wipe down the shelves, weed out the unwanted & reorganize all the books. Though it's a long process, I secretly love having time to fondle all these books 

(it really does rival fabric fondling for me!!)

This is the "before", which isn't too bad, but you can see on those right hand side shelves there are a bunch of books just shoved in wherever they'll fit at the moment.

 Below is the "after"... you may notice not only the neatness of those shelves but also all those holes left 

FOR MORE BOOKS!!!! Wahoooooooo!! 

Excluding the top two shelves, everything on the left is spiritual/non-fiction/reference for homeschooling, and the shelves on the right house fiction alphabetical by author as well as some movies & photo albums.

After I got some work done, I got to do some quilting. These pillow shams match & were made for my 14 year old daughter's quilt. Back in 2008 I made a large queen-sized version of this flying geese pattern, sewed the shams at the same time, but just never got back to quilting & finishing them.

I think it's easier on these to see the quilting from the back

(before sham construction)

(after sham construction)

And to round out the weekend-- some good family fun..

The four of us went kayaking on the Susquehanna River, starting at Duncannon & paddling back down to Marysville.

This was my first time kayaking, and while I'd boated on the river back when I was a kid, and we've taken the kids out to play on the river's edge, this time around it seemed so big & ominous! 

Maegan & I were in a tandem kayak together, with Marshall & Morgan riding in another one.

And at the end of a full 3 hours of paddling, I'll admit my arms felt a little like jello, my butt was soaked from some Class 2 rapids, and I came away with some nicely burnt skin, but I'd had fun & learned how to do something new :)

Afterwards, we stopped at Rita's for some Gelati, then headed home for some backyard swimming, ladder golf, and food cooked on the BBQ!

I hope you all had some fun with your long weekends & made some memories!

What would I do if...

 ... I won the Powerball? Or any other large-sum-paying lottery-type game? I'll confess this isn't likely to happen since I've never  played & wouldn't even know how to ask for it, or all those numbers, and what the heck is that "power ball", or the red ball, for?? (wait, are they one & the same thing??)

So the question was posed over at Erica Vetsch's blog, and I had a little fun thinking about this for myself. 

FIRST thing I'd do:  pay off some of our hefty debt-- do you KNOW how much a law degree costs people?? Not me but the hubby. (I have my own student loans to remind me that I went to school without ever actually graduating or earning that degree, but they're not nearly as impressive.) But to pay off the house, and some other ancillary money-sucking  companies would be a little bit o' honey here on earth.

(Can I grow one of these by the way?)

Okay, SECOND thing I'd do:  buy myself & sock away the money for upkeep on a beach house.

Besides being at home in my hermit way, I love, love, LOVE the beach. There is nothing that stirs such a primal connection to the earth for me as sitting on the beach feeling a powerful ocean pound the sand in front of me. I love the smells, the taste of salt on my lips, the way it makes my skin feel, the laid-back atmosphere-- 

Cold with a sweatshirt or hot with a  bathing suit, it is where I feel most at home.

The THIRD thing I'd do (after I figured out where I was living):  hire a housekeeper. You know, someone matronly that wouldn't give my husband a second glance  ;-P but who'd clean up after all my "pig-people" (sorry, but you know I say it with love), my beastly animals, and WHO WOULD COOK!! I hate to cook but love to eat. I so want a cook... short-order or chef. I'm really not too picky.

FOURTH on my list might be one of those things that sounds good, while I wouldn't actually enjoy it?? As I've shared today & other times, I tend to be a hermit. I like my home, I have many hobbies & am able to keep happily busy playing the piano, sewing, quilting, reading, writing, blabbering, blogging, cross-stitching.... etc., and never get bored!! 

BUT I've always yearned to travel beyond our U.S. borders a bit more. When I was a kid I went to Canada & saw Niagra Falls. And a handful of years ago, my hubby & I went to London for just about a week.

I'd love to see the Egyptian pyramids, visit Jerusalem, hike in a tropical rainforest or lounge on a Caribbean beach. Maybe...

And last but definitely not least, FIFTH:  I'd invest in our retirement & some health insurance. Being self-employed people, we are in need of both in a big way!!

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WON THE POWERBALL?