Getting into the Christmas Spirit

I am one of the lucky few who's work actually slows down considerably around the holiday season. Things will pick up again quickly once the first of the year rolls around, but until then I have been happily using the personal leave I have saved and treating myself to a few long weekends strategically placed throughout November and December. My intentions were to use all of my extra time productively and get a lot of errands, chores, and holiday planning out of the way. But despite my best efforts, most of my time off has been spent sleeping in, having play-dates with family and friends, and catching up on my favorite TV shows and movies. : ) But, all time was not lost. I did manage to use some days wisely and enjoyed a fairly stress-free Thanksgiving thanks to more time to prepare, kept up with my crazy amount of mitten orders on Etsy, and last weekend I was even able to check off most of the items on my Weekend To Do list.

My cute little 4' tree!

Knowing that last week was my last 4-day weekend before Christmas, I was determined to keep the procrastination to a minimum. I had a long list of holiday stuff I wanted to get out of the way and less and less time to do it in.  The most important item on my list was decorating! I haven’t truly decorated for a few years now. Sometimes I manage to get a tree up but typically I put it off so long I just don’t see the point when I’ll have to take it back down again soon after. But seeing as this is the first Christmas in years that I’ll be able to spend with my sister, not to mention my bro-in-law and nephew, I figured the occasion called for a little extra holiday spirit. So, I spent an afternoon stringing up lights and decorating a small tree. I hung our stockings over the fireplace and dug out a few old holiday keepsakes. I even added some simple crafty flare by making paper snowflakes and putting them in the windows along with some cool yarn I found that I used as icicles! And now that the house is decorated, I'm really happy I put the extra effort into it. It's so warm and cozy and will add a lot more enjoyment to our Christmas morning when we all get together for brunch and present opening.

Another thing that was checked off the list last weekend was Terra's and my new holiday tradition of cupcakes for the coworkers! We simplified even more this time and stuck with only one type of decoration rather than three but they turned out really cute and just as delicious as the cupcakes we made for Halloween and Thanksgiving. We used Christmas M&Ms so we'd have lots of green available for the wreaths and used red mini M&Ms for the berries. Then peeled apart tons of Twizzlers for the bows. They were simple to make but fancy enough to still get major props from our family and coworkers!

So, now that the decorations are up and the cupcakes are devoured, it's back to finishing up my Christmas shopping. I'm also still working on a few handmade gifts (although not as many as I had originally set out to make) that will hopefully be done in time to make it under the tree. Thankfully I don't have much left to do so I'm not as frantic about it as I have been in previous years. And for those of you interested, I'm still planning to take some photos of the finished products... so come back and look for those once the holidays are over!

 Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Random Fact About Me #106: I have somehow acquired a small yet growing collection of whale ornaments that I absolutely adore.