Christmas Looming

With Christmas looming, all my time is being manipulated to completing handmade gifts. I finished the scarf I was working on in the last post, and have started on the next one (nothing really to show just yet). I know I'll get it done, but at this point I think it's going to be tight!

My son helped me drag the Christmas tree and boxes of ornaments from the crawlspace early last week. He then helped me get the tree assembled and it sat unadorned in front of the living room window for a week. This past weekend I picked up some clear lights and set to decorating it in a style that we don't normally do. Normally we just pile all the decorations we have ever purchased onto the tree complete with many coloured lights with a programmable lighting sequence. Each year the tree looked more and more chaotic! I was determined to try something different this year with the hope that less really is more, and I quite like it! Although I do miss that personal touch of all those familiar decorations, and the clear lights seemed foreign at first, everyone seems happy with the result. Now I have added a few very special ornaments that have been gifted to me or have special meaning. I like it a lot better now.

One thing I have been working on feverishly were these little dolls to send out as gifts. They are fairly easy to make, and I got them completed a few weeks ago. The tiny flower pots weren't meant to be part of the dolls, I just popped them in the pots for the photo shoot. I kind of like the flower pot base though :)

The sad part about this story is that when I took them all to the post office to be mailed out, the bead I used for the head wouldn't fit through the slot to measure "letter post" which would have cost $1.80 for each envelope. Because of that the envelope was bumped up to "parcel post" and would have cost me $9.00 for each envelope I had to send out! I wasn't about to spend $45 on this. Needless to say I didn't send them, and I had to start on the gifts all over again. I didn't have the heart to rip off all the doll heads to rework them because they're very well secured onto the dolls, and I think it would have ruined the entire doll. Anyway, the new gifts have been made in a complete frenzy and are now off in the mail. Lesson learned.

I've been unable to post or visit anyone properly with all stuff I've been working on and I'm quite busy with the daycare kids as well. I also chose this crazy time of year to advertise for new daycare kids, and have been busy with interviews. The difficult part about having interviews for daycare is keeping my house really clean and tidy all the time! The whole house is open for inspection which becomes tricky when I have kids in the house all day and Christmas stuff threatening to take over. I don't know what I was thinking.

Anyway, yesterday I didn't have any kids in as two are sick and two were not coming because they had hockey games out of town. It snowed heavily Sunday night, so it was a good day to knit ... and clear the driveway :[  If I can squeeze a few photos out of the camera (which I mentioned earlier is not working properly), I'll share some Christmas pics and snow pics. I'm sure you're all dying to see those ha ha! Today is again going to be spent on my own with the two littles still ill at home. I can't say I'm sorry for another unexpected day off (who would!). Back to knitting and clearing away empty Christmas boxes and cleaning house and generally getting all ready for Christmas!

Thanks for stopping by today, and I hope to be able to visit everyone very soon!

Wendy