A neat Christmas find at the dollar store

Our Family Collection of Christmas Memories ~ and a holiday gift list

While visiting our daughter and family recently in northeastern Nevada, we enjoyed visiting Honk's, their local dollar store.  At first I didn't think that this Christmas memory book which I picked up was really a Mary Engelbreit book, but it is!  How neat!  It has space for several years' worth of memories, lists, etc.  I plan to start using this right away.

It even has space for a family tree!

There's a December calendar to fill in and lots of info about "Christmas at Our House"

There's even space for your Christmas card list!

All for one dollar!  Honk's advertising says "Always an adventure" and it's true.  You never know what neat things you will find at the dollar store!

Holiday cruising mission accomplished!

(Photo from a previous year; we have snow, but not that much!)

Well, I haven't exactly been keeping up with all of FlyLady's holiday cruising missions (designed to help us cruise through the holidays) but I did manage the one for today.  The assignment was to decorate one place in your home for Christmas.  I had to think about this for awhile.  All of my Thanksgiving decor is still in place, and I didn't have time to change everything around today.  Then I realized I could do the glass-topped crafting desk in my bedroom.  I typically keep seasonal cards and other paper treasures displayed under the glass, and the desk needed decluttering and dusting anyway, so I accomplished two things at once.  I changed the fall/Thanksgiving cards for some Christmas/winter ones and decluttered so that now the only items on the desk have to do with Christmas crafts I still need to make. 

The cards I just added; this shows one half of the desk top

And here is the other half.  Decorating done here and the decks all cleared for more Christmas crafting!

It feels good to have this task accomplished and has inspired me to start swapping fall for Christmas downstairs tomorrow!

I've also been getting a lot of Christmas crafting done this weekend, which is a great encouragement.  As soon as we put the tree up (hopefully this weekend), I will start gift wrapping.

Rudolph Day for November

Rudolph Day for November was not as productive as I would have liked.  I came down with a sore throat on Thanksgiving Eve and battled that for most of Thanksgiving Day, though Mr. T was a great help in preparing Thanksgiving dinner so I didn't have to work as hard as I ordinarily would have.  The next day was Rudolph Day and the head cold had hit full force by then, but I did celebrate by sipping many cups of hot Candy Cane Lane tea.

I also did some work in my Christmas notebook, pinned some neat Christmas ideas to my Christmas board in Pinterest, leafed through some Christmas books and magazines,   and worked on a few top secret craft projects I am doing for gifts.  It wasn't a totally wasted Rudolph Day, at least!

Tentative baking list for Christmas 2011

 
Here's my tentative list so far.  It includes candy, which of course is technically not baking, but I listed it anyhow.

*Ashley's Granola Bars
*Date-Walnut Casserole Cookies
Whipped Shortbread
Eggnog Logs
Sacher Torte Cookies
Pepparkakor
Golden Apricot Cakes
Chocolate Peppermint Trees
Brown Sugar Cut-outs
*Holiday Melting Moments
Peanut Butter Balls
Heavenly Delight

A * indicates a new recipe.