Mama's Christmas list

Around our house lately, much energy and time has been focused on creating our Christmas lists. And even though I want to reduce the amount of items coming into the house this holiday season, I feel as though I should help out my husband, who I understand might be having trouble coming up with gift ideas. Any of these items, alone, or in multiples of 3, would be absolutely wonderful to find under the tree Christmas morning:

2008 Toyota Prius in Seaside Pearl or Barcelona Red

Eagle Creek Tarmac ES 25 along with packing cubes and compression sacks

Terra Pass Carbon Offset

Nikon D80

Flip Video Ultra

Altec Lansing Earclips-S

InStyle Instant Style or Tim Gunn's Guide to Style

From Uncommon Goods - Ticket Stub Diary, License Plate Necklace, Cow Clock, Sea Glass Necklace, Snarky Luggage Tags

Italian Ceramic Salt Box

Almost anything from the Viva Terra catalog

SIGG 1.0L Reusable bottle

Reisenthel Mini Maxi Shopper

Other places for inspiration:
Green Gift Guide
Grist
The Daily Green

Don't worry, I will post shortly about greening up our Christmas and helping our whole family understand what Christmas is about. This is just my wish list....Santa has to have somewhere to start!

Under the weather and trying to do to much

It is quite possible that I have too much planned for this weekend. I am slightly under the weather (a cold caught on our trip to San Diego), I think I am working a little too hard, and even though it is all for fun, I might need to cut back. Here is the deal:

On Sunday, I am hosting my annual cookie exchange party. To this shindig, I invite 8 of my friends who enjoy baking (or those who don't!) and we each bring a dozen of our favorite cookie for each other person and share them at the party. Usually, I put together a light holiday lunch to enjoy together. This year, I decided to get tricky and thought we would make tamales while whiling away the afternoon. The only real issue is that I have not ever made (well, once a loooong time ago) tamales, and I have some hesitation about bringing this to a group of folks who have also never made tamales. And, if that was not enough, I also thought that perhaps we would have three different fillings, a chicken with tomatillo, a stewed pumpkin and a black bean and corn. All of these would be made from scratch, natch.

Besides the party, I need to make my eight dozen cookies and package them in something super cute.

I also need to decorate the house. It is a holiday party, so I should probably have the house decked out for the holidays. This would mean putting up the tree, throwing out the festive tschotkes, and generally getting the house into a holiday mood. This is all on top of needing to actually clean the house, you know, sweep up the dust bunnies and throw the kid crap somewhere.

Oh, and then I actually need to make some lunch for these gals, since I cannot expect them to make tamales on an empty stomach. In keeping with the theme, I thought about making the Posole Soup from the newest Cooking Light magazine, along with the Ensalada de Noche Buena. And perhaps we should have a festive holiday drink. Oh, wait, I had this all figured out - Gruet, a sparkling wine from New Mexico.

I think this about covers it - decorate the house, make 8 dozen cookies, create a holiday lunch, and prepare for tamale making, all before Sunday. And it is Thursday night. I guess this is all do-able, but it is certainly not in keeping with my make-the-holidays-simpler motto.

Humm, so, do I change things up or make myself crazy? Big questions, and I apparently know the answer, but probably won't act upon it until Sunday at 12:30pm, 30 minutes before everyone arrives....

Wordless Wednesday

Upside down on the Knights Tournament at Legoland
November 2007
(not pictured, Little A, gleefully next to the water blaster)

Pie Making

Tonight, we decided to make 2 more pumpkin pies (we did not seem to get enough at Thanksgiving). In a rare turn of events, I found the patience to make them with the kids, even letting them help with the pie crusts. Little A demonstrates her pricking technique while the Big Guy shows what a good crimper he is.

The pies turned out well (with all this help, how could they be bad?!). In fact, we might even have breakfast pie tomorrow. Our kids are good pie eaters, for which my husband is happy and thankful. In his family, pumpkin pie slivering is an art that is passed down through the generations!

Stack O'Catalogs

And the stack grows, although slowly. Up to eight inches, and it is not even December. I wonder if things will pick up after December 1, or maybe as we get closer to the last day to send items to arrive in time for Christmas.


It would be interesting to find a way to measure the amount of emails that I get - at the moment, I am up to about 20 messages a day with special holiday savings!

Related Posts
Stack O'Catalogs - November 21 (5 inches)
Stack O'Catalogs - November 15 (3 inches)

Going Green this Christmas

After writing my post earlier this month about keeping the lead out of our holidays, I got to thinking about having an overall greener Christmas season. In addition to buying less, wrapping in reusable packaging, and recycling the heck out of everything, I thought it might be good to try to cut back on my energy. The only problem with that is that I am addicted to pretty lights on the outside of the house. So, I seek a replacement.

PG&E provides a nice page of information about the cost benefits of replacing lights. Looks like I can save about 90% a year by replacing my bulbs. Now, I just need to find them - Target had a very meager selection this morning and their website does not list any tonight. I found a place in Kentucky, but they seem to sell their lights by the gross. I continue my search, hopefully I can find something before December 25th!

Photo courtesy of Energy Ideas.

OMG, I forgot to post

I forgot, I did not think it was going to happen, I had made it the rest of the way through the month without forgetting, even with a trip to San Diego thrown in. And I don't have a particularly good excuse, yesterday was pretty normal - after having my first facial (see here for the reason why), I spent a little time holiday shopping (mostly pointing out to my husband what I would like), the ran into an old friend from childhood, and finally had a nice dinner with friends. I guess I was exhausted when I got home, as I could only stay up through one Tivo'd show...and then I went to bed. No blogging, oh well.

So, let me release myself from the guilt of failing this project by saying that I am pretty sure no one reads my blog - something Google Analytics supports. So, I am not failing my readers, I am failing myself. And if I can get it into perspective, then I will put it aside, because in the scheme of things, this is not a life breaker. I can (and will) go on. It might even become part of my lore, although it might also be a sign that I could just back off a bit and concentrate on other things.

Since I mostly blog at night, after the kids have gone to bed, I have given up other activities that I used to enjoy - my favorite was to read magazines while watching TV with DH. Sounds strange, but I found it relaxing. Sometimes I would also pick up a paper craft or a needle craft, just to keep my hands busy. Also, because I am now searching for material to blog about, much of my brain activity is spent analyzing the past, rather than focusing on the present. I used to have this problem in a slightly different form - I would focus so much on the future that I could not focus on the present. And when I don't focus on the present, I miss out on quite a bit. Activities with the kids take on a different importance when I am searching for "material".

On the other hand, I have taken a moment each day to reflect on what has happened, or my thoughts about things or whatever, which I cannot say that I often do. It is interesting to look back on the past month, read what I was up too, and see if writing things down has caused my behavior to change or intensify. Also, I don't seem to be snacking as much after dinner, since the laptop occupies the space where my bowl of ice cream used to sit. And I enjoy writing daily, something that I thought might be a slog. Maybe this blogging thing is not such a bad thing.

In any case, I think that this month of posting has been a useful exercise and I might actually participate in NaBloPoMo again next year. And I still have a list of topics to blog about, so I plan to continue on as long as my holiday season allows. It would be nice if I could find my niche, like other bloggers have, but I think I need a little more writing to make that happen.

Thank you for your attention, see you again tonight, as I will not let one missed post upset the boat. I will treat it like birth control pills, and just take the next one as soon as I remember, even if that means taking two in one day......