****Holiday Planning, 2013****

[Nancy]

I had to stop all yarn projects and let the cracks in my hands heal up, it was just too painful to do it.

A friend said that the yarn was wicking the moisture out of her hands and had to stop in the winter.

Makes me wonder if that is what is happening, except it is not just my hands. Have started taking more vits. Hoping this will help!

[Nancy]

This week I made envelopes for the grand kids to put $1.oo bill in I didn't have to buy candy for thm that way. I do not turn on the porch light. Kids go to the store down town here for trick or treating.

I got seasonal flavored creamers and froze them last week.

I have declutteted the living room, and I am working in the dining room.

Made some progress on the creativity room. BAKE used up some of the cookie dough.

I will get some frozen lagansga for one of the freezer meals. X

I made blue envelopes that I will use for the gift $ for the family members that celebrate Jewish holidays.

[Nancy]

I ran out of room on that other post. Getting SO INSPIRED by HGP on u tube!

I decided 2 make JAR GIFTS. Of cereal snack mix. Cleaned some jars up for that.

(I am putting a note here I want a foot massager so I remember to drop a hint. )

U tube has gift in a jar too!

[Harriet]

Whew!
The sample card came from Zazzle.com. It will work fine, so I won't have to go around to printers personally, trying to find someone who can help. We're going to be sending Christmas cards with the art with which dd won the holiday art contest, announced Christmas day last year (watercolor of Mary looking up to heaven). This was suggested last year and the rights belong to the artists, so it really makes sense for the children's families to use their artwork the next Christmas.

For a pretty-Christmas-card lover like myself, there are some trade-offs to making custom cards.

For one thing, the sample card came out as shiny-surfaced as I had feared, but dd says it's okay with her and doesn't look bad.

Ya'll may remember that the artwork had to be absolutely square for the contest. Zazzle.com only offers rectangular custom cards, so I just placed everything high on the design I made on their site, and my intention is to cut the bottoms away using my quiltmaking ruler, rotary cutter and mat. Dd says it's too much trouble, that the white beneath the image is fine. But HRH agrees with me, and he has a pretty good sense of design, so we'll go to the trouble anyway.

I'll need to take this envelope apart and use one side edge to make a template so I can cut one side of each envelope so that they work for square cards, and I'll just have to be philosophical about it if I can't make the side I cut look exactly the same. Then, I'll have to get used to the idea that the envelopes are very cheap, thin, white ones, when so many other cards out there that you can buy for less would have come with prettier envelopes! Then, I'll have to hold my nose and pay extra for stamps that can be used on square envelopes, but that's okay. Your little girl just doesn't get to have this kind of acceptance and encouragement every day, and before you know it, she's all grown up and not even at home any more to sign cards with you! So this will make a memory.

Now I just have to wait for Zazzle.com to have a sale! They had one on the 24th that was 20 percent off anything, so I'm thinking maybe if I wait a while another will come up. We'll see.

[BookSaver]

Harriet ~ Hallmark had a series of cards a few years ago that were square, and they just offered their normal rectangular envelopes for mailing. No need to make the envelopes square, too, especially when as you mentioned they would need extra postage.
Although a square envelope would certainly get the recipient's notice that it contained something special ....

[Nancy]

I have listened to the holiday cruise missions, a bit frustrated bc I did not start them before. Illness, painting, work sigh.

I did get out the holiday movies for dgd to see better than the Halloween spooky adds on tv this week.

Got the quilt out with the cold weather we are having now.

I washed the containers for cookies, snack mix etc. Put them up so the kids wil not be playing with them so they will stay clean.

I took down the summer wreath it is so dusty I did not want it inside so I left it outside.

[Harriet]

Nancy, what a good idea to find a substitute for scary Halloween and get some holiday entertainment in the house instead.

BookSaver, thanks for trying to pull me back from the brink of tangent. I promise I won't go crazy trying to get these cards into perfect envelopes! But I figured out that we'd have to send more than 50 cards to go over a $10 bill of extra postage money anyway, and we haven't ever sent that many. So no matter which way we go with it, it's not much of a hassle.

Tucked into my delivery package of the card was a coupon for a flat 15 percent off of my next order - I had missed that. So even if there is no sale any time soon, that will be a nice help

Nancy, make sure you are getting healthy fats in your diet, like olive and coconut oil, plus I think the scoop on good old butter lately is that it's perfectly fine for you. Coconut oil could be put directly on your hands at night, too. Make sure you are getting enough water to drink - I have fallen short of that lately and need to get back on track myself. Anyway, I hope your skin feels better soon.

[Nancy]

Thanks Harriet, I down loaded fly - lady control and holiday journal on my tablet. Time to tweak my plans and updatw them.

I eat coconut in the winter, use bag balm on my hands and have upped my water intake that is helping.

[Nancy]

Well I wanted to bring up the holiday dishes but by there was no place to put them so .... I had to clean out the china hutch which was cluttered with school & craft supplies. Yea for progress. Now I can think about getting the dishes up stairs that wil be at least part of my exercise.
My hands are better now and I have decided the project that I was doing can be tweaked to a rainbow project so the break was good.

I did few min. Cleaning the carport glad for that progress!
Time change weekend.
Dgd said the Halloween candy will go into a a pinata for her bday I love that idea!

[Nancy]

I have been rounding up stuff for the kids to help make cereal snack mix I think I have enough of the ingredients for a batch now. I have containers and they are cleaned.