Christmas!

 

So here I sit. One day left of work before break.  (An unpaid break mind you. Catch 22. Yes I love the time off, but the paycheck at the end of January is going to majorly sting!)  5 days before Christmas.  Am I done shopping for gifts? Nope. Am I done planning gifts for people? Not so much. 

I’ve realized that I’m a horrible gift giver.  If I had a nice amount of cash, it would be easy to lavish gifts upon people. But on a super tight budget, it’s really hard to find something that’s not cheesy, and something that’s meaningful.  Also, for someone who thrives on being a “planner”, I’ve SO waited until the last minute to do all of this! What the heck? 

 

Here is the progression of the Christmas tree…

Carnage of the boxes.  I decided to transfer all of my decorations and such from cardboard boxes, into plastic tubs. 

Here’s the naked tree with just the lights.  It is pre-lit, but of course there are 2 strands out. One at the top, and one at the bottom, so I have to add some strands to it.

Here she is all done up. It looks lopsided, but it’s not. The cat thinks he has ultimate rule of the Christmas tree skirt, and therefore runs at warp speed across the room, and jumps onto the skirt skidding it across the ground. Turd. For some reason he also likes to vomit on this tree skirt as well. Thanks, Sox. Let’s show a picture of the guilty party as well:

 

             

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I tried my hand at making sugar cookies for a cookie exchange we had at my church.  The cookies turned out fantastic, and looked amazing. But to do the six that I took a picture of, it took me a ridiculous amount of time. We’re talking like 5 hours start to finish including refrigerator time for the homemade dough. Here is the recipe I used  for the dough:

http://www.marthastewart.com/275176/sugar-cookie-recipes/@center/276956/cookie-recipes

And the frosting I got off of this amazing site:

http://www.sweetsugarbelle.com/2011/04/royal-icing-101-or-all-roads-lead-to-rome/

Here is a photo of my frosting:

It was so thick, I could shake it, and it wouldn’t fall off the beater. To loosen it for frosting the cookie, you just add a little water.

Here is what the cookies looked like.  I’ll try them again when I’ve got a whole day with nothing else to do but make them.

           

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To finish up, last time I mentioned  about my labels on the bins and how I wanted to fancy it up. Well here are the labels I made for the Christmas bins. I like them so much, I’m thinking about doing this for every bin in the house and garage! Obsess much?  I think not!

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Have a fantastic Christmas all 3 of my blog followers everyone!

Lisa