Weirdly enough, I thought it was still the 23rd when I began typing.  I spent the evening finishing the projects for the little girl’s room and one thing lead to another and it’s now 1:26AM.  I’m glad the projects are done and will be so glad when everything is wrapped and in the car and on its way.  I love doing this process but at some point, it takes over our whole house.  We put the wrapped presents under the tree but then there are the ones in laundry baskets I use as gift wrap and the ones in stockings and the ones that are too big to wrap…It gets crazy and once the gifts are delivered, we are back to being normal again.  I’m thrilled that we are delivering everything today and that tomorrow when they wake up, Santa will have delivered everything on this little girl’s list.

I probably will not blog on Christmas so I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah,  and a happy and healthy 2016.  May Santa bring you everything on your list as well.

The older I get the faster the year goes.  Yet the winters usually drag forever.  I guess that’s what it’s like when you live in the Northeast.  I  wish spring and fall had the longevity that winter has.  January consumes about four months to every one month of the other seasons.  I really don’t like snow.  It was worse when Rich and I worked, but I still don’t like it when we are predicted to have a lot of snow.  We live in the snow belt.  The snow belt as it pertains to us is directly related to Lake Erie.  If you live within about 45 minutes of a Great Lake, you are considered in the “snow belt.”  That means that the lake dumps a lot more snow in my area than it does directly on its shoreline.  I like to think of it as kind of a bummer.  If you live twenty minutes south of us, you don’t get the amount of snow we get.  My in laws lived about 75 miles from us and they never got the snow we got so they never understood why we were freaky about getting home if the weather was predicted to get bad.  We have driven home in some horrible blizzards and I definitely don’t miss doing that.  I always get a laugh out of the people who think snow is so pretty.  Trust me, if you lived anywhere near a snow belt, you wouldn’t think it was quite so lovely after all.  Last year we decided to spend December in North Carolina and visit with my sister and her family for the month.  We had to medicate our youngest golden retriever who hates the car and our older golden retriever got stress colitis and yes, it’s exactly like it sounds.  We were only a minute away from our beach house when she started whining and pacing and by the time we reached the house, she had diarrhea all over the other dog, herself and the backseat (that was luckily covered with a sheet.)  About a week and a half later, she got this weird thing that veterinarians in the North call, ” Old Dog Encephalitis”.  They have no balance and their eyes twitch back and forth and they tilt their head.  It’s supposed to last three to seven days and they are usually ok, but the summer before, we lost our labrador retriever (that’s in the photos with me) to the same disease.  So we were FREAKED out.  The veterinarian in North Carolina had never diagnosed a case of it and yet where we live, vets can diagnose it over the telephone, it’s so common.  We knew exactly what needed to be done so we asked the vet for prednisone, something for nausea and dizziness.  The dizziness makes it so they can’t walk, so Rich carried Aggie up and down the outside stairs for her to go to the restroom.  He forgot we were near the water so the stairs always had a slippery mist on them and he fell down the steps twice while holding our 90 pound dog. Being the greatest guy ever,  he never let Aggie out of his protective embrace, so the only one who got hurt was Rich.  Aggie got better quickly but when it was time to make the 12 hour trip home, we decided to give her the same anxiety medication as Bella.  Bella was still freaked, Aggie, who was 15 pounds heavier than Bella, couldn’t move.  Rich lifted her into the car and we were off.  We stayed in a hotel that was roughly halfway home, and the next morning they were predicting an ice storm.  We were minutes ahead of that storm the whole way home.  Once we got home, it never stopped snowing until May and I am not making this up.  The whole month of December there was no snow at home, but the minute we get back, it never stopped.  With that trip always in the back of our minds, we have not been able to consider taking another road trip with the dogs and I could never leave them for a month, especially when Aggie is almost 15.

So now you have my N/W PA snow 101 tutorial..it isn’t pretty.

Big day.  I had a project that I couldn’t accomplish by myself, so my buddy Cora came by and we videotaped a couple of projects together.  It was fun having someone else to craft with, as I am normally alone in my crafting pursuits.  Cora is a real craft maven though.  She is a seamstress, crochets, quilts, knit,  you name it, she does it.  Years ago, Cora taught me how to can and we’ve canned together often over the years.  It’s great to can with someone else as all of that slicing and dicing can get really old after a while.

My project today was a simple fleece scarf but little did I know, fleece is a wily substance.  It stretches whenever and wherever it wants and then doesn’t return to its original shape.  I’ve watched so many videos on making fleece scarves and every crafter made it sound like it was the simplest thing possible.  Ok, maybe for other people, but not for me.  Cora explained it this way, “You really need three arms to do this.”  Well that definitely leaves me out.  You need one arm to hold the fleece, one to hold the measuring device and one to run the rotary cutter.  I became the arm that held the measuring device.  I’m really glad we did the video and not just because I got to work with one of my closest friends.  I think our video is honest and shows the difficulties of working with fleece and the ways around it.  I’ve never seen any videos that go into detail or that show the tools Cora had to make the project go smoothly.  End result, we (or should I say Cora) made three scarves for our mother/daughter team and matching scarves for our little girls’ dolls.  Cora offered to make scarves for my dogs but I hesitated and then said no.  After all, they already have Christmas collars and all that fur to keep them warm.

Ok, no more stalling.  I am absolutely going to get something done today.  I know I keep saying that, but this time I really mean it.  I have a project that I want to do but keep putting off.  The time has come to do it.  No more procrastinating.  It’s an album that will be a gift for a very good friend.  I’ve been doing small bits of it here and there but I really need to finish it.  The problem is I don’t want to make something that isn’t worthy of her.  She’s crafty and so is her daughter.  I don’t want her to unwrap it and realize I could have done better.  So I’m putting it off until I am absolutely certain it will be great.  How can I be sure–there’s the rub, I really can’t know for sure.  By the way, what does that statement mean anyway.  “There’s the rub? ”

Q From Paula Conneran-Weig: What does the saying There’s the rub mean and what is the origin of the phrase?

A The phrase is Shakespeare’s. It comes from Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy:

To die — to sleep.
To sleep — perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

By rub, Hamlet means a difficulty, obstacle or objection — in this case to his committing suicide.

PS Remind me never to wonder what a phrase means, or to find the answer.. Yikes!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  Everywhere you go.  The snow is coming down in waves.  I heard our weather forecast for Christmas was supposed to be in the 50’s.  I can’t ever remember a Christmas that we had such a heat wave.  I can tell you though that I remember a lot, ok most, Christmas’s that look like the weather we are having today.  Snow, snow and more snow.  Our dogs love it and come in just covered and stand patiently waiting for someone to wipe them down. They are golden retrievers and the snow hangs like an additional coat on their fur.  They get so excited when it snows and bring most of the snow drift inside when they come.  I wish I got as excited about snow.  Maybe it’s the ice or driving in snow that makes it not so fun. When we were kids there was always the chance of a snow day.  Adults need some snow days as well.  Wouldn’t that be great?  I’m giving myself a snow day tomorrow and you are welcome to join me.  Of course I’ll be wrapping gifts and doing a couple of videos and some laundry, but other than that, I’m taking the day off. Oh, maybe do some baking as well.  Definitely a snow day though.

 

I started wrapping Christmas gifts today.  I’ll be honest, the more I wrap, the more present seem to accumulate.  I love to wrap gifts and it’s no surprise, it involves ribbon.  I’ve always been a huge fan of presents that look really special.  When our niece and nephew were young, they used to point out the presents I wrapped because they were so different from the others.  Mine always had huge bows that were wired and the gift wrap made a statement.  The rest of the family consisted of men as my mother-in-law had passed away and both of my husband’s brothers were divorced. Their packages were either gift cards or all of them had the same gift wrap and no bows or the bows fell off in transit.

I also love to see reflective gift wrap so the lights of the tree catch the paper and make the room seem even more festive.  I like to use a wide variety of papers so no two packages look alike either.  It’s even more important to me now because the vast majority of my gifts are for a family that Rich and I adopt for Christmas.  We want their Christmas morning to be special and memorable and wonderful.  We spend a little bit of Christmas day talking about how we think the little girl will react to her new bedroom or the doll we found for her or the art supplies she wanted.  Our parents have passed away and we don’t have any children so it’s important to us to give a deserving working family a Christmas that they will remember.

When I was a kid, my mother always surprised a certain coworker with special Christmas gifts the woman had mentioned throughout the year.  This lady had no family and was pretty much alone.  She never knew my mother was her Santa and I always loved that she didn’t.  It gave my mother so much joy and I can only imagine what it gave to the receiver of those gifts.  It was my favorite part of Christmas.     I honestly can’t remember the first year we adopted a family since my staff and I always had a family we bought things for every Christmas.  When I quit working, I found an agency to go through who would help me find the perfect working family for us.  We like to make sure we really do a great job so we limit the number of family members and we like to have a little girl to buy dolls and dresses and we like to spoil the parents as well.  Every year we get a thank you note that makes me cry.  Since it’s anonymous, the agency passes the letter to us and these families take so much time to make sure that their gratitude is heard.  We are so grateful for them in allowing us to celebrate Christmas through them and hopefully, someday, they too will be able to adopt a family or person for Christmas as well.  Wouldn’t it be great if everyone could pay it forward in some way.  It doesn’t have to involve money.  It can be taking the time to call a friend who needs someone to listen.  Or an elderly person who has no one to talk to.  The woman in the checkout line in front of you who needs 20 more cents and is digging in her purse for it.  Someone to hold the door for you.  This Christmas, if each of us took a moment to think of one small thing we can do that could enrich someone else’s life, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?  I really hope it is.

I am seriously running out of time for my projects to be completed in time for Christmas.  I’m not sure what to do first. I think I’ll prioritize based on what is fastest so that at least others will also have time to do those projects as well if they so choose.  It’s kind of scary when Christmas sneaks up on me fast and I’m not prepared.  Even more frightening is how tired I am.  I think I’ll just go to bed and worry about it tomorrow.  It’s 5:30PM.  I need to either power nap this exhaustion off or give in to it and just go to bed as soon as supper is over.  I’m voting for plan B.. Just give in and go to bed.  Whatever project was in my head can definitely wait until tomorrow. Of course I still have all of the wrapping to do for the Christmas family and that could take a very very long time.  It’s not worth stressing over, give in and go to bed.

I really want to buck up or man up or whatever people say when they want you to be tough…Frankly I’m going for, give in or give up or whatever saying works with I am too tired and need to sleep.  Tomorrow is another day.

Time is running out on our Christmas projects and I have so many good ideas left.  Seems like I should keep some of them for next year.  I did hoard that Michael’s bargain of clear ornaments in planning for 2016.  When did I start planning ahead like this?  I’ve always bought things after Christmas for gifts for the next year, but crafting projects?  Ok, I never really had the time or interest in crafting until recently.  What’s changed?  I guess I found a hobby that allows me to express myself and hopefully encourage others to try something new as well.  I really enjoy hearing from new people and have met some pretty incredible individuals in the short time I’ve been doing this.  I’m looking forward to new ideas and projects for 2016 as well.  I think it’s going to be a great year.  I’m planning on it!