SHEs Organized

Its a wrap for south bound gifts.
dd.2's family wrap will wait til I'm back home and we plan our late Christmas. Boxing day I can get a driver for my car if I haven't slept well so decided against seeing them then. 1 night I sort of manage. 2 nights w v little sleep I shouldn't drive.

now to the shops. hope theres a car park. and not too long a wait at checkout.

PS - Ivy - today RLS is robbie louis stevenson for the purose of this thread.
wtg on all your doings

Lynlee, I just went back to page one and of course, RLS was NOT restless legs syndrome. I don't know why I glossed over the quote this morning. I was very "groggy" this a.m. I'll look a little closer next time. Or get coffee first- Village 2nd.

Thanks for telling me about Robert Louis Stevenson's quote, too.

It's great you can get a driver for Boxing day if you've not slept well, too.

The Blanket is done... not the neatest job I've done but it is done. I have cut out the soles of DP's slippers and was just about to start sewing when I decided to finally take a break... TG I did because it just dawned on me that I need to cut out the tops first to integrate them.

I am also multi-tasking by pouring the vase candle in sections. I used an apple-cinnamon oil to scent it and every 1/2 inch or so I am grinding some cinnamon into the candle, I am hoping that it will add to the scent as it burns and maybe sparkle a little as it burns.

ToDo/TaDa's
d2s
coffee
clear of DR table
find sheet for backing
measure and piece together
sew blanket
cut out DP's slippers
pour vase candle
put together and sew slippers
cut out DP's DstepS's slippers
put together and sew slippers
Dinner

BBL

Back from the shopping. Found spots for everything in fridge and freezer. Utilized one cooler outside for the fresh juice and cider and one for the frozen juice concentrate. As it is currently 20*F outside, I'll wrap the cooler with the fresh juice in a blanket or papers in order to keep it warmer. The coolers are in the garage and I don't think they'll freeze overnight, but they might. The 'frozen juice cooler has been there for a week with frozen water bottles in it and they are still frozen.

Grocery list prep took 70 minutes but was a work of art. Sorted by category (frozen juice, frozen veggies, fresh veggies, etc.) and then the prices of the loss-leaders were noted in assorted colours because I was using three stores. There were 4 items I couldn't get and four that were from a bulk food store that was closed by the time we got there.

We had dinner at Subway to start so I was able to have meat on a salad instead of McDonalds which had been dh's first suggestion.

Total time for dinner, 40 minute driving time and shopping took 2:45 minutes so not bad. No lineups in any store, including Walmart.

I have to go into the city tomorrow but one plaza (I hope) so once I'm parked I can walk from store to store. As it is over 1/2 mile from one end of the plaza to another, I'll probably skip exercising tomorrow. I'm up to 6900 steps for today without exercising.

The birthday cake (angel food - I figured that's the most appropriate for Jesus!) is baking now.

Dh is back in bed. He was a big help with the shopping but I'm glad he went to bed once he got home.

Need the collective smarts of the village

The church is short about 60 vespers candles (very skinny tapers.) These are a special order item (and cost a fortune) so I can't get some for tomorrow.

Can anyone think of an easy way to make a tea-light holder? If I put them in glass holders the glass will heat up. Egg cartons might work but at the moment, I only have one on hand.

I did a quick google search but didn't find anything useful.

Harriet: borrowing isn't likely an option. Every church in this area does a candlelighting service on Christmas Eve! You are right about there being a zillion in a box. Actually, it is 120 but when you open a new box, it seems like enough to last for ages. Except the kids break the candles. So we get handed back a partly burned (maybe 1/10 gone) but completely unusable candle. At 30 cents each, it is quite the waste. Compared to 5 cents each for tea lights, it bothers me. Tea lights can't be broken either.

Another option is a Costco run (ugh!) for another box of 25 electric tea lights. Actually 100 of those costs about the same as 240 of the vesper candles.

I baked a batch of nuts and bolts so those are cooling on the kitchen table. And the cake is almost cold so I'll take it out of the pan in a moment.

Once the nuts and bolts cool, I can go to bed.

I didn't polish the silver, get the basement bedroom ready or do the ironing but I had a pretty productive day.

good night all.. great work

Hello, villagers ~

One party down, one to go.

Pizza party with DMIL and DH's siblings was fun and mostly drama-free. Only 1 DB and his wife could not make it, but it has become almost impossible to be able to see them all in the same place & time so this was a big group. I don't know when we'll see any of the nieces and nephews and their families. DMIL seemed happy with her gift of 365 knitting stitches, to have something to play with these winter days.

This morning (seems so long ago ...) I went out to finish clearing the mess at the end of the driveway so I could finally get my car out of the garage to run a few last-minute errands. It was a wonderful surprise to find it already done. Either the city crew did it when they were out with their bobcat, or the next door neighbor did it when he dug out his truck.

No sign of bad neighbor from the other end of the block, and doesn't look like his property has been touched since the blizzard. We don't have sidewalks, so he doesn't really have to clear away any snow if he doesn't need to get to the building. Maybe that problem has solved itself.

I need to make another batch of fudge tonight to take to my family's party tomorrow. DH is working on his part of DMom's gift that we are making her. I'm not sure how much he has left, I'm guessing I'll have to finish it in the morning.

The gift is a CD recorded from an antique music box that was given to her by DSDad, who died several years ago. It works and sounds beautiful, but she can't play it any more because she thinks it is too loud for her apartment, and it has no volume control. She also wants to know more about it, because he bought it at an estate sale with no information. She let me bring it home so I could see what I could find on the internet. It plays 8 songs and she doesn't recognize any of them; half of them sound sort of familiar to me. Now that we finally figured out how to make a recording of it, I'm hoping to have better luck identifying the songs. Tomorrow we'll give her the CD and a printout of as much as I've been able to locate so far, and I'll try to get a complete song list for her by Valentine's Day.

Before I can sleep tonight I need to:
1) wash dishes
2) dry and fold a load of laundry
3) make fudge
4) wrap DSis's hostess gift, a basket with a few de-stress items
5) pull together the research I've done so far on DM's gift, and format it into readable pages
6) find a report cover for the pages

We aren't due at DSis's until 5 so I could wait on some of it, but I know I'll sleep better if I do this much. There will still be more to do tomorrow.

Kathryn ~ The only thing I can think of for holding your tea lights is maybe a coffee or tea cup of some kind? If the tea light is at the bottom of a styrofoam or heavy-duty paper coffee cup and you hold on at the top ... I guess it depends on how long the candle will be lit. Or if you have diner style ceramic cups with handles ... but then you'd have to bleach them afterward to be usable for drinking again.