Do you take sugar? one lump or two?

When we are in the midst of this lull period between Christmas and New Years it is difficult to consider things like responsibilities, schedules, and routines. The late nights and early mornings, celebrating with family, cooking and consuming way too much food, and playing with new games has thrown my body clock off the last few days... and the coming week will be a mishmosh of attempting some "normal" work time before the sister I like arrives with my nieces at an as-yet-to-be-determined time Tuesday evening/night for their two day visit.

For now, I've a couple funny moments that stand out from Christmas.

Early Christmas morning... G received her much anticipated "Just Like Me" American Girl doll for Christmas this year. She had been talking about it to everyone for months. She was so excited we took it right out of the box and she ran around shoving it in people's faces saying "LOOK! IT'S MY JUST LIKE ME DOLL THAT I WANTED!"

From my Sister in Law:
"Wow! That's really cool!"
then a few minutes later...
"Hu... it actually looks like her. Oh wait... is that the point? OK, I *just* got that."

Later Christmas morning...
Well, first a little back story. On Thanksgiving I sat at the drum set to jam with my Brother in Law while D was cooking. It was probably the first time I'd sat at the set in about a decade, so
I was totally rusty. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I'd downloaded some rock songs from the 80's to study the drum parts to prepare myself for potential Christmas jamming. I did alright when we went through some Poison and Guns N Roses, but when it came to Def Leppard I couldn't get the part right. Brother-in-Law looked up at me and said:

"Well, you've got one too many arms."

(Side note: the drummer's lack of appendage actually does make it more difficult to play his music accurately because he makes up for it with more intricate bass parts, which I CANNOT do. My poor foot just locks up.)

But at any rate... here I am back in the saddle again.


(Lyrical title: Pour Some Sugar on Me - Def Leppard)

"Oh, rarely had the words poured from my penny pencil with such feverish fluidity."

Some fun conversations and observations of the season.

G: "Mommy... you finished Santa's chair for the village!"

Me: "Yep, I just need to glue on the lights."

G: "But Mommy there's a problem... I don't know how to tell you this... but the little people are too big for the houses - they are taller than the doors!"

Me: "It's a forced perspective thing. Like Lord of the Rings."

--------

I made one trip to the mall this season to take G to see Santa, and I did a little shopping around. Walked into a game store, where the employees are super helpful. No less than 4 asked me if I needed help in the 10 minutes I spent in the store. I stood with a few games in my hand from the list I was working from, deciding which ones to get for the recipient. One of the clerks stopped to ask if I needed more help.

Me: "No," I said, "I'm just deciding which ones to get now."

Clerk: "OH! Well, how old is the person you're buying for?"

Me: "He's thirty...."

Clerk: "Ah nevermind. I was going to say this one has a higher rating, but sounds like that doesn't matter. Do you have any questions?"

Me: "No, just trying to see the differences in the games."

Clerk: "Ah... So this one here... this is what we call a 'first person shooter'..." (he made air quotes) ... "This is where the view is like you are the character..." (he puts his hands up to the sides of his head, like he was holding a VR visor)

Me: "I'm going to stop you right there... I'm a gamer. I was just looking to see if these are all single player or not."

Clerk: (he smiles sheepishly and points to the games in turn) "Oh... OK. Single player. Single player multiple online. Multiplayer."

Me: "Cool, thanks"

Dude's Nerdometer must have been malfunctioning that day.

---------

I went to have my last session with my trainer today (she's moving to another state and today was her last day of work) We did upper body - arms, shoulders, upper back, abs.

Me: "I was up late wrapping gifts last night"

Trainer: "Ah. So... did you finish, or you've got more to do?"

Me: "About halfway done."

Trainer: "Uh oh."

Me: "Uh oh?"

Trainer: "... because you're going to be sore." *evil laugh* "5 more reps."

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G: (lamenting about D being gone) "But I wanted to bake cookies with Daddy!"

Me: "Well, that'll be tomorrow. It's almost bedtime and you spent a lot of time today decorating the gingerbread house."

G: *SIGH* "Now I have to play alone!" *stomp stomp stomp*

Me: "HEY! Get back in here!"

*stomp stomp stomp*

Me: "You don't sound very appreciative of how Daddy spent time with you today, your tone sounds rude and pouty. Try to remember how much time he played with you today already, AND that it's almost bedtime, so there is no time to bake now even if he was home."

G: *SIGH* "Alright."

Me: "Ahem. And now... before you go... sing to me 'Santa Clause is Coming To Town'. Please."

G: "Why?"

Me: "You'll see."

G: "Oooooohhhhhh
You better watch out!
You better not cry!
You better not.....
.....
.....
....oh. I get it."


(Quote Title: Ralphie - A Christmas Story)

"If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn't be more surprised than I am now"

Sharing our holiday cheer, here is D's Griswold Project for this season... the Elf House.

This is the view from the street (zoomed in slightly) Dan built the house around the frame we had used for the Halloween Ghost. It - quite literally - started with a plan to wrap garland around the posts and hang oversized ornaments underneath the awning.
Somehow it morphed into a house.


A three story house, with a reindeer in the attic window, and more lights on the prop than we put on our actual house. Inside is a lit tree, oversized presents, and the oversized ornaments we had purchased for the original project.
My contribution to the house was to create the curtains made from the fabric D picked up.



I also set up the Candy Cane Forest by our knobby little tree by the front walk.


Here's a daylight shot of the giant ornaments that we hung in the knobby tree.



As D was busy in his Griswold Workshop, I put myself in charge of all the interior decorating. Here's some of our nutcracker collection on the top of the bookshelves. I decided to add dashes of red all over the house this year - hence the ribbon base.


More of the nutcrackers and smokers on the mantel.
The stockings are hung carefully over to the side so as not to get smoke damage from the fireplace.


Here's a wide shot of the living room - the lighted garlands are around all the banks of windows on this level of the house, and this year I hung little red glass ornaments that look like C9 lightbulbs along the tops of all the garlands. I like the hint of color they add during the day when the garlands aren't lit.

The bar - I had to shift a lot of sodas and bottle to make room for my village.
I started painting pieces for this village back around Christmas of 2000. Pieces were hard to come by, and it took me a couple years to find out that the manufacturer sold out to another place. So at the time I bought up a bunch of their inventory and have been slowly painting additions to the town.
Until this year my town was just a quiet little strip of buildings. (I kept telling people there was a blizzard, and everyone was huddled inside sipping cider) But having finally finished the 4 lit buildings, this year I finally debut some village people!


No, not *the* Village People :)
Of course when I put this on the table for the first time, G was quick to point out that the people are too big for the buildings. I explained it's a forced perspective thing, and we'll just leave it at that.


(Since the photographing of this scene, I've finished two more sets of people who need to be glazed and added to the village, and also discovered that additional buildings are available on Ebay. Hmm... I might need to shop a bit.)


This year I finished framing all our photos of G with Santa, in matching white frames, and they are displayed together in our little alcoves, along with little Santa ornaments and statues. I love the whole red and white effect I get on this wall.



Here's our tree. It's 10 feet tall. Some day I'll make a tree skirt big enough to deal with such a massive piece of greenery, but for now... we'll just enjoy the tree as it is.

Happy Holidays!

(Movie quote title: Clark Griswold - Nat. Lampoon's Christmas Vacation)

"That's because I left them resting on a hot stove for too long"

In the morning I wake up, shuffle downstairs in my little pink slippers, pour myself a cup of coffee, and sit on the end of the couch to think about my day. This is when I prioritize, I decide what I need to do, what I have to do, what I want to do, and what I can do. Some days are light, some are heavy, but every day starts with this plan. If I work it right, and get my time estimates down, and allow for upheavals... I can manage to juggle my day all the way up until the end having not dropped a single ball.

Lately though, I've either been bad at predicting time slots, or I'm just trying to juggle too many balls at once... because this week I've managed to accomplish about 95% of my daily tasks brilliantly, but have an epic fail with the remaining 5%. It's different than seeing the end of the day in the home stretch and realizing that something is undone, and needs to be put off until the next day. That's just rescheduling. That's realizing I've got too many balls in the air, and I need to set one down. By Epic Fail I mean completely and totally forgetting a task - letting it drop until it rams me in the face saying "HEY! DID YOU FORGET SOMETHING? HMMM??" - along with that the *plink plink plink* sound of balls dropping out of my control, clanging to the ground.

It's frustrating.

But on the good side of things... I made Holiday Project deadlines, and thanks to relative decent weather, I managed to hit them all. Cards, calendars and ornaments mailed out last Friday... boxes to relatives and friends shipped out Monday, and tonight - with the mere twisting of one piece of wire - gift projects for family members are officially done. For the next 8 days until Christmas I have the freedom to paint village pieces, take photos of decorations, bake cookies, wrap presents - all within the confines of my own home.

Perhaps I will even have the time to crawl around on the floor and look for all those balls I dropped this week.

Speaking of balls - here is a holiday favorite of mine...



(Quote title: NPR's Delicious Dish on SNL)

It's time we hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.

For the last couple weeks, Tuesday evenings have been Girly Craft Time at my house. My sister in law had a couple gift projects to work on, and I've always got something stewing over here... so we decided to just mark the calendar and sit ourselves down with our projects and wine, Christmas Pandora station playing, and get some work done.

It is amazing what a couple hours of concentrated effort can achieve. Our first night I finished assembling the gifts for my nieces (though I cannot show them here yet, for fear they might find my blog) and last night I pieced together nearly all my soldered Christmas ornaments. It was a great accomplishment to say the least... tonight I finish them up, work on assembling cards, and tomorrow I can begin actually MAILING THINGS OUT!

The ornaments started with a pack of Christmas card examples from National Geographic. They are post card size, and have writing on the back of what size/quantity of cards you can order with the front image. I receive this packet every year, and always want to do something fun with the images. This year I decided to make use of my 2x2 glass, and practice soldering... so in September I began cutting the cards and taping up the glass, then soldering the edges and adding jump rings. It was a slow project that I came back to when I had time... and last weekend I finally finished soldering the last of my stack, so that I would be prepared to sit at my table sipping wine and adding the fun little charms and hanging ribbons. Here are some of the finished ones:



I don't feel I could sell these, because the images are copyright from National Geographic... but it has given me the inspiration to take lots of fun winter photos this year and turn them into ornaments for my extremely empty Etsy shop.

(Lyrical title: Need a Little Christmas Now)