The stockings are hung by the chimney with care

Two days left until Christmas, and the moments are ticking away...a little too slowly for my youngest, but, for me these last few hours and minutes that lead up to Christmas morning are amongs my favorite moments of the whole holiday scene. I like to savor the anticipation and experience the thrill of knowing that there are some closets that are forbidden and wonder what is hidden inside the colorful presents under the sparkling tree. These moments are set a a part from our normal routine. People pair up to go shopping together and come home in happy festive moods.The piano that goes untouched all year long gets dusted off and played and we actually sing the entire 12 days of Christmas on the way to the grocery store. Candles are lit in the kitchen and people hang around and tell stories as the marathon baking commences...the turkey is dressed, pies are made and Christmas eve quisches are whipped up. The house is full of noise and excited voices as Christmas carols are cranked up on the stereo. In these last few days before Christmas we watch movies like "White Christmas" and "A Christmas Carol". Our holiday couldn't possibly be complete with out Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye or Alistair Sim! Two days left to consume chocolate santas, red and green m&ms and sugar cookies in the shape of trees, bells and snowmen. And two days left for getting my youngest to behave simply by calling out "Santa Claus is watching!"

getting ready for the big party!

Every year we throw a big holiday party a week or so before Christmas. It has become a Muldoon holiday tradition and everyone looks forward to it every year. If I have a brain freeze and inadvertently forget to invite someone, they will call me to ask when the party will be!

I love our holiday party because it is a chance to collect together all the people that we hang out with through out the year. We typically include neighborhood friends, soccer friends, swim team friends, baseball friends, work friends, school friends, Italian friends, boyscout friends, and in the case of my oldest son, girl friends AND ex girl friends! We have quite the crowd, and because I request that everyone bring a dish to share, we have quite A LOT of interesting & delicious food to eat!

Parties are great because they provide an excellent excuse to clean up and declutter the house. Lucky for me I just need to straighten up because, my husband has volunteered to run to Costco to stock up on food and wine. He must have forgotten how much he hated doing it last year. Last year when he went, he ended calling me every five minutes on the cell phone to tell me how horrid the traffic was, how bad the parking was and that the lines were infernal. Needless to say, he wasn't a very happy camper. Mental note to self: remember to keep cell phone turned off until he gets home from Costco!

Anyway, the party is this Saturday. If you are in the area stop on by and join us...just remember to bring something really yummy to eat (and remember to take your shoes off at the door...like an idiot I just had the carpets cleaned two days ago and it is supposed to rain this weekend!) Let's party!

after the sugar settles...

Did we ever bake AND decorate this weekend! We whipped up our usual holiday Double Chocolate Delights (kind of like homemade oreos with peppermint icing), molasses cookies, and the traditional decorated sugar cookies that we cut out with cookie cutters. In addition to all this sweetness overload, I made loaves and loaves of cranberry bread. If you are wondering about the white streak on my son's nose...since the kids where little, I have always told them that a sign of a real baker is to have a flour on your nose. I would always take my finger and dot their noses with a touch of flour from the rolling pin. Before we started cutting out the cookies this year, Kyle requested his traditional dousing of flour, which made me happy to know that he is still young enough to enjoy this little thing we do.

I am also happy to report that, unlike previous years, the kitchen mess was not catastrophic, and we weren't all crunching around on colored sugar or sliding around on flour that had sifted to the floor. I attribute this to Sinbad, my new Hoover dog. He was on duty cleaning the floor through out the entire process. Later we set up the tree with minimal problems. It took us about twenty minutes to remember how the pieces of the tree went together and plug the thing in. For years we used to get fresh trees, but last year gave up and got ourselves a dandy pre-lite, stress free tree, that is stress free as long as you remember how all the pieces go together.

Now the biggest irony of the season...now that I have made all these cookies, the challenge, of course, is trying not to eat them.

Some traditions are hard to break

It's December and time once again, to deck the halls. The other night (with my husband's help) I brought down the dusty ornament boxes that have been stored in the garage all year, and sorted through the same old tired assortment of nutcrackers, reindeer, garlands and assundry trappings that I decorate the house with every holiday season.

Every year I try to be a little innovative by adding something new to freshen up the scene, but when it comes right down to it, most things are constant and unchanging. The mistletoe always goes on the nail over the kitchen door, the lighted garland goes on the mantel piece along with the tin santa's that I bought in Overland Park Kansas. The stockings are hung in the front living room and the dining room table is covered with a bright red tablecloth and set with green plates. Tomorrow we put up the tree and decorate it with the same ornaments, some which date all the way back to when I was five.

There are santas everywhere; on crockery, mugs, calendars, and even in the shape of cookies. Every December I say I won't go to the trouble of baking four different kinds of cookies and five loaves of cranberry bread...but, I always do. "Why bake" I say, "when Peppridge Farm puts out a dandy assortment of holiday cookies conveniently packaged and ready to eat!" But, after stating to my family that I would be boycotting the whole cooky baking scene, the kids all broke out in a clamour, and I realized that there would be no escape from holiday baking this year.

So, this Saturday you will find me laboring away in the kitchen making a huge floury mess and coating the floor with red and green sugar, as Bing Crosby croons "White Christmas" on the stero. Some traditions are just too hard to break.

Housecleaning

I spent the majority of my Saturday evening doing a little housecleaning. It wasn't the typical housecleaning that you would imagine. It was a housecleaning of my website. Here I am a web designer and yet I have been a little remiss in maintaining my own site. So, last night, instead of relaxing and doing something not computer related, I sat up until 3am upgrading my own web content and paying attention, finally, to my own business!

It was rather a cathartic experience, I might add. I have been a little bogged down with lots of new work assignments and feeling the stress and not so much the joy of being a web designer. But, the experience of sitting down and reviewing my work and sorting through the many, many projects I have worked on over the years made me feel...well proud, and brought back my enthusiasm for what I do.

Sorting through my list of clients, was like cleaning out my closet. I suddenly remembered past projects, long since finalized, that I had done for a consulting firm when I lived in Kansas City, or a design job that a helped out with for this or that advertising company in Chicago or Boston. It was like finding old clothes in your closet...sometimes just seeing an old favorite dress you used to wear brings back a flood of memories that you forget until you are actually standing there holding the garment in your hands. The fabric reminds you of another place & what you used to be like when you wore it. That is why it is often hard for me to throw things away...if I don't have the physical reminder, like a garment, I am afraid the memory will be obliterated as well, because I won't have a reason to remember it.

Well, going through my website last night was a lot like cleaning out my closet. There are lots of past projects to think about that I had almost forgotten, as well as a whole host of new clients that keep me busy currently. It was inspiring to see the cumulation of projects that have carried me to this moment. It really brought things into focus and helped me feel really good about myself.

Who said a little feng shui wasn't a good thing!

Count down to Christmas

It is December 1st and despite the fact that the count down to Christmas is on in a big way, I am not feeling that particularly festive. It is raining today and I have a post-Thanksgiving cold. I probably have a touch of the flu that kept Michael home from school on Monday. Pat is traveling and won't be home until Friday night.

To make things even merrier, we are having work done on the boy's bathroom. Seems the shower door has been leaking and over time water has seeped into the floor and the ceiling below. We have a contractor who is ripping up the floor, installing a new shower and putting in new drywall. Didn't really want to spend money on improving the boy's bath...but, on the other hand didn't really have much of a choice unless we wanted the bathtub to fall on top of my husband's head in the office below!

Since we are having work done and there is a contractor lurking about the house, we have opted to upgrade all the toilets in the house. The ones that came with the house have always been a bit sub optimal and continually clog up. The contractor assures us that the ones we are installing are capable of flushing 27 golf balls! My challenge now is keeping the boys from testing this out! Anyway, ho ho ho, Merry Christmas...guess this is Pat and my Christmas gift to each other...nothing says Christmas like new toilets! So, what is on your Christmas list?