Getting in the Holiday Spirit

As soon as I got home from Thanksgiving I started getting into the Christmas spirit.  I started decorating, baking, and putting off writing cards.  The first thing I did was put up my nativity, which I absolutely adore.  My mom started giving me pieces of the set for Christmas two years ago and I get really excited to set it up each year.  Beautiful, no?

The next thing I did was get the tree, but that story is going to get a post of its own, so for now just know that I got the tree.  Up next: baking!  I've always wanted to do a cookie exchange and this year I was invited to participate in two!  I ended up bailing on the second one because the first required that each person bake 15 dozen cookies.  (Yes, 15.  Originally it was 18, so we were pleased when it was "only" 15!)  My friend Julia and I agreed that we neither wanted to bake 15 dozen cookies nor have 15 dozen cookies in the house, so we went halvsies.  We each made seven and a half dozen and we bagged 6 of her cookies with 6 of my cookies.  Since Julia has a Kitchen-Aid counter-top mixer she was kind enough to host a day of baking, thereby saving me a lot of time and effort at home.  Julia made cherry chocolate chip cookies and I made oatmeal scotchies.  Yum!  I didn't get any photos at the exchange, but imagine a pool table completely covered in heaps of cookies.  That should give you a pretty good idea of what it looked like.

I finally quit procrastinating on the Christmas cards a couple of days ago and I'm nearly finished with them.  I think I've got about 30 more to write and I'll be done.  Cards are always a huge task because I like to do something creative and this year I ended up making my cards by hand.  On top of that, I'm currently without a working printer so whereas I usually print address and return address labels, I had to address every card by hand.  I send out about 100 cards and I write a note to each person by hand, so it's an incredibly time-consuming task.  The good news here is that all of my cards are made, they're all addressed (and return addressed!), and I'm about 2/3 of the way through writing them.  My goal is to have them all in the mail by Monday and I think I'm going to make it!


Through no small miracle I finished my holiday shopping a couple of days ago.  This has never happened before.  Every year I drive to Chicago a day or two before Christmas and spend Christmas Eve running out to pick up last-minute gifts and then lock myself in a room with my mom's rolls of wrapping paper until two in the morning.  I wonder what she'll do when I show up two days before Christmas with all the gifts purchased and wrapped?!  Tonight I wrapped and packaged everything that has to be shipped out, which was a bigger task than I had anticipated.  I loaded all of the packages into my trunk already so that tomorrow I can just waltz down to the garage and head to the post office without having to think about hauling everything downstairs.  What a relief to have that project taken care of!  Now all that's left to do is wrap gifts for my family this weekend.  This may turn out to be my most organized Christmas ever!