Christmas in July starts tomorrow!

I'm not sure how June passed so quickly, but here we are on the eve of July 1!  Again this year, I'm making an attempt to celebrate Christmas in July here in my Christmas kitchen.  I hope to be here every day, sharing recipes, memories, poems, craft ideas, gift and wrapping inspiration, planning tips, and much, much more.  We will see how it goes!  Stop in and visit, won't you?

June's Christmas Club meeting

(The pretty vintage card above is available in my Etsy shop.  I love the pastel candles tucked in among the berries and greenery!)

So yesterday, our little Christmas Club had its June meeting at a local library.  Only three of us attended, but it was an encouraging and productive meeting!

Actually, as I informed the other ladies, we had a fourth, long-distance member who was with us in spirit: Vicki, from Christmas 24/7/365.  Vicki lives in Arizona, so obviously she could not get to the meeting, but I have told her she can be an honorary member of the club. We are delighted to have you, Vicki!

Another blogger who was unaware of our meeting but was in a way present at it was Pamela, from The Lady of the House Speaking.  I had printed out copies of her post presenting 5 ways to make Rudolph Day fun and productive, which is truly worth the read.  Pamela suggests fine-tuning a craft on Rudolph Day, as well as a festive recipe.  She adds several other ways to make your Rudolph Day special, so head on over and read the post!

We agreed that it probably wasn't likely, with our busy lives, that we would do all five things on any given Rudolph Day, but Pamela provides a wonderful plan if one has an entire day.  I know some people celebrate Rudolph Day on an adjacent weekend, if the 25th of the month is too busy.

We discussed our summer and fall plans a little bit.  All three of us will be traveling during the fall at various times, so we agreed it's even more important to meet during the summer and get ahead of the game as much as possible.

One of Carrie's goals was to get her Christmas gift list started.  She did get money for Christmas gifts  put in the  budget.  And she actually began the list yesterday, so that's a good start on her goal.  I have my gift list started (I admit I usually begin it in January, after I've seen how the previous year's gifts went over).  Susan still has her list from last year, as she didn't use it.  So one of our assignments for the July meeting is to get our gift lists completed and fine-tuned.

I shared that I had purchased my Christmas stamps for the coming year.  (I actually ordered these in January. ) You can find all sorts of stamps at usps.com and I highly recommend doing so right away.  The only downside might be that if new holiday stamps come out between now and then, you might wish you had waited.  I ordered global stamps as well for my out-of-country Christmas cards.  It's going to be so nice to have these all ready to go when the Christmas cards are.  No last-minute trips to the post office for Christmas stamps.

Susan brought up the topic of neighbor gifts.  She has done gifts of cookies, and also small loaves of banana bread.  I usually do cookie trays, but have also done other things like hot cocoa mix, tea breads, scones, even granola.  One of our neighbors always makes a sourdough rye bread which we look forward to every year.  Another family makes jars of salsa using ingredients from their garden. There are loads of ideas on my Kitchen Gifts Pinterest board, so if you are looking to change up your neighbor gifts, or start a new tradition, you will want to check that out.

We set a tentative date of July 19 for the next meeting.  In addition, I'm hoping to post every day that month for Christmas in July, and planning a Christmas in July sale for my Etsy shop, so it should be a festive month indeed!