The (Mostly) Christmasy One

 1.) Christmas Craft 

I took the plastic window thing from the cardboard box one of Little Girl's birthday presents came in, traced a coloring page onto it with sharpie, and then colored some Mod Podge with food coloring and let the girls paint it. I was concerned the sharpie lines might smear, but there was no problems with that whatsoever. 

The result is a moderately pretty stained glass decoration of sorts. I think I want to experiment with doing a heavier outline (and a simpler or bigger figure) with black paint and making it look more like actual stained glass at some point. 

2.) Christmas Bread 

I was going to make fruitcake this year, but I kept putting it off, and then it was a week and a half until Christmas and all the recipes I could find specified that you have to let the thing sit in rum soaked cheesecloth for a month. 

So I made something called stollen instead. 

It's basically a giant sweet roll with nuts, raisins, and the preserved chopped fruit that a fruitcake has, topped with icing. I was able to use the stuff I bought for the fruitcake (except for the rum, but I'm sure that'll find a use), and my husband actually enjoyed eating some of it, which would not have held true for fruitcake. 

The recipe made two, I cut up one and most of it went to coworker gifts for Chris. The other one is in our freezer, ready to be plugged into whatever dessert obligation ends up in my lap over the next couple weeks. 

3.) Christmas Party 

Chris and I were able to leave Bitty Baby with my Mother in Law for the first evening in almost two years and go to the Knights of Columbus Christmas party at a local steakhouse. 

It was nice, though I was hungry and it was a long while before they brought the food out (though not the alcohol, oddly enough...I only had one drink but my natural lightweight-ness paired with an empty stomach very nearly got me into trouble). It was lovely to sit with other adults and eat without having to interrupt myself every few seconds to redirect a toddler, and it was really, really nice to have Chris to myself on the drive home without having to answer questions or break up a squabble. 

It's interesting what you learn to be thankful for as a parent. 

4.) Christmas Cards and Teacher Gifts 

Are Christmas cards a dying tradition? I love writing and sending them, and getting them. We decorate with the ones we receive, and they're always what I search for at the Christmas clearance sales. I've noticed no one does those family newsletter ones anymore though. I guess social media has pretty much made them obsolete. They're mostly pictures of families (which as I'm off of social media now are nice to get) or maybe just a sentence or two written in a traditional one. 

I got our cards sent out, and then remembered as I dropped Little Boy off at school that I completely forgot to get anything for his teachers this year. 

Sigh. 

If they got a haul anything like Little Boy's or Chris's though, I probably shouldn't feel guilty. There was a marked lack of plastic coffee tumblers this year, which I was thankful for, but there was an abundance of candy, little cakes, cookies, hot chocolate packets, and in Chris's case, a huge porcelain Starbucks mug that rivals a soup bowl for volume, and several Christmas ornaments. We gave away the little pack of cloth koozies. 

I don't know what it is about the culture of education, but boy, the sugar and cheap little gifts (the kind you look at in the store and think "who would buy this?!") flow like water around Christmas. For teachers, administration, and students alike. 

5.) Christmas Lights

A friend of mine sent some of those tiny LED string lights to me as a St. Nicholas day gift, and they look really, really pretty on the mantle/home altar we have. Very Christmasy. 

As tradition dictates, I also dragged out the old incandescent white icicle twinkle lights from our wedding and hung them on the window (as an aside, doing an evening reception with white Christmas lights was WAY cheaper than doing a daytime reception with flowers but looked just as expensive), and hung the string of blue lights we have from some mysterious origin in the kids' room. 

The Christmas decorations are thus nearly complete: we're just missing the tree, which goes up on Christmas Eve and down on Ephiany to minimize the broken ornament body count. 

6.)Decidedly Un-Christmas-y Injured Dog 

We got the dog fixed this week. 

We'd been putting it off because we live behind a fence and gate that has been largely successful in keeping gentlemen dogs outside. She could socialize with the neighbor dogs through the chain link, but not come into contact. 

That all changed when a dog I call Scrappy Doo entered the scene. Scrappy, I'm convinced, has some sort of super-doggy ability. No matter what we do to the gate or fence, he manages to jump over, climb over, or slither through whatever obstacle we set up. 

And Scrappy most definitely still possesses all of his doggy manhood. 

So we made the appointment and got her spayed. She's gotten to be an indoor dog for two nights now, sleeping in our bedroom so she doesn't get into trouble overnight. There haven't been any accidents, thankfully. 

This is the same dog we were concerned would chase off our cats. Most of the cats have stuck around this far, and there doesn't seem to be any reasonable way to get rid of the dog, so this is just what it is right now. 

And that's life around here.