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

[Harriet]

Children's Thanksgiving cookie activity:

Dd33 brought Keebler Fudge Stripe cookies, Rolo candies and white icing. With the 4 boys this evening, she had them turn the cookies upside-down, pipe icing in the center and use the Rolo to press down, so that a little white icing came out all around the Rolo. This makes "Pilgrim Hat Cookies", and they are very pretty and interesting on a tray.

[Nancy]

I have dusted the top of the entertainment center where we put the creche but realized that if we get a new TV might be changing that up so pushed pause on that to
think it through first.

[Nancy]

I have decided to put upncreche'
Did that today. Hoping to wait on the other TV for the after holiday sales. We can move creche' later
If we need to.

[Ivy]

The "Mario" hat turned out adorable! Our 4.5 yr. grandson will LOVE it! ♥ The pattern designer admits she cannot write a decent pattern, which is true, so I had to adapt it to make it look like it did in the photo.

Will try to wrap some gifts this weekend. Am considering baking cookies to take at Christmas, too.

[Ivy]

I probably won't bake cookies to take for Christmas. They're providing lunch there for everyone. Perhaps we'll buy a plate of cookies pre-made from the store. If not, we'll just take ourselves with everyone's gifts.

Still haven't gift wrapped. Not in the "mood" quite yet. I want to wait until the temps are warmer and I feel more like doing it. Snow's forecast for Mon./Tues., so maybe white stuff coming down from the sky will make me industrious and motivated to wrapping more than right now, during the frigid temps weekend.

[Nancy]

I have some finishing touches to put on a gift basket.
A few cards to sign and put in.
One to post also.

[Harriet]

After we got the tree up we encountered a bunch of setbacks - pet in the hospital, multiple-day visits from an old friend of HRH's in town by surprise. So the tree has had no further progress except lots of watering.

Slowly getting all the final cards out of here.

Have really got to get on the gift-wrapping task.

Have bought extra eggs and mayo to make deviled eggs tomorrow.

The idea of clothes shopping for myself is probably out the window.

[Ivy]

I have 3 gift bags with cards, wrapped gifts ready to deliver. 1 couple won't be back for awhile. The wife's Canadian Fil passed away, so our dfriends are going to Canada to fetch her dual-citizenship Dmom. We'll wait until closer to Christmas to deliver to them, as they've left today, to go up. Needed to borrow a relatives 4-wheel drive pick-up because of snow. It's such a bad time for deaths to appear; DH is at a funeral now. It's nice to have these 3 homes' gift bags done with cards.

Next, I need to wash/dry and perhaps block 3 afghans for the 3 youngest grands and block hat bills on the "Mario" and "Luigi" hats. One end curls under, 1 end curls up. Am out of gigantic gift bags for the grands, so will use shopping bags with wrapped gifts, labels in them. We can take gifts back home to our place, then and recycle the shopping bags for another reason or time.

I believe our neighbor will be especially honored and surprised to receive President Barack Obama's book "Audacity of Hope," because he's a huge fan of our President. It was a new book I started, but didn't finish, but knew it was meant for our neighbor.

I'm very tired from wrapping and need to return the 3 big boxes of gift bags to our closet.

[Nancy]

Tree is up now yea!

[Ivy]

The hat bills got blocked last p.m., all gifts are wrapped and bagged. This is the last of the holiday preps, except for envelopes to be written on for smaller gifts for each person. It's nice the cards are done, how things are wrapped, and ready to be delivered.