I was on top of things last year. This year? Hah.

“Santa” brought our Trees after Thanksgiving. Normally Santa sets them up before going to bed, but got tired before trimming our main tree. Three weeks later, on the day of the kid’s Christmas party at school, and four days before flying out, I finally found the time to finish our last tree.

Nicole and Alexis noticed the difference right away. Alexis kept pointing and screaming “Tree! Tree”! Nicole wanted to know “Who did that?!”

“Santa?” I propose.

“No, Mommy!”

Someone is already on to me. Adding insult to injury, we purchased two of those little foil trees to put on the girl’s dressers. I wanted to claim Santa put those up as well, but Nicole caught me sneaking into her room. She was quite annoyed at me when I tried to convince her she was mistaken, that it was actually Santa disguised as Mommy.

I am not ready for the Christmas magic to be over yet!

Trimming our main tree this year proved to be a little more challenging because I just didn’t like the ornaments we had.

Our white light tree uses shatter proof ornaments, as does the kids’ tree. The later was out of necessity, the former because I fell in love with the champagne set that only came in the shatterproof variety. They’re realistic enough to pass for typical balls. Shatterproof ornaments have come a long way. You used to be able to spot them at a distance. Now you have to get close, and even then it’s not always obvious. I can attest that they are, indeed, quite hardy. I dropped two on the hard wood floor with the kind of thunk you would have thought would wake the kids. Ornament survived. Not so sure about my hardwood floor.

Sadly many of our non shattered resistent ornaments have bitten the dust over the years, and what we’ve been left with is a miss match collection of balls for our main tree. So miss-match hodgepodge-y that it’s noticeable, even on our tree with five different color lights and collection of non-ball, non-collection ornaments. We barely put any balls on our main tree last year, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it again this year. As I was going through the ornament box I discovered two sets of shatter resistent mini balls I had purchased a few years ago in an after Christmas sale. It was forty little balls, just red, green and white/silver, but it worked. I think I’ll probably stick to the same color scheme. While the mini balls really make the hallmark ornaments stand out, I think I want to experiment with some traditional sized balls as well.

Alas, the store does not have any in the right color pallet. Trends tend to change from year to year. The ones I have are deep green and slightly blue tint. The current green ones at the store are leaning more into a lime direction. I dislike yellow greens, and fuschia pinks and neon oranges which appear all the rage these days. It may take a few years for the colors I like to come back in style, so I’ll have to wait.

I finished Christmas shopping yesterday, and the cards went out earlier this week. That just leaves baking, and getting some Christmas themed photos of the girls. I can do this.

Last Last weekend it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t done anything in terms of Holiday cards.

I do everything for the cards, from concept to design and photography. It’s a lot of work, and the effort to payoff ratio isn’t always there, but I take pride in it. In the past I’ve queued up a bunch of different designs, which helps reduce the December time work load. In good years I not only have a concept in mind but have already taken the family photo. (Recently the family photo happens in early to mid December.) This year I had… nothing.

Since time was running out I decided to do things a little differently this year. Rather than one big family photo, I decided to use the individual head shots of the girls I had been working on the past month. (At least it’s a recent photo, if not a holiday themed one, right?) I was initially going to get a similar style photo of Domingo and I, and do a three-photo card. (It’s a lot easier to get a good photo of adults on cue than it is to get one of the kids!) After a little design work I decided to just forgo that idea.

I dub this year’s card “My Sunshines.” Not exactly Christmas themed, but I like it. Call it “California Christmas.”

I finished the card a week ago Monday. I figured I’d print them and address the envelopes one of the days the kids are in school. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

When I finally got around to printing the cards this afternoon I discovered we were out of ink. Out printer is pretty old at this point, and finding ink for it is getting harder these days. I usually have to buy it online, but I didn’t want to wait for shipping. Fine, I’ll use one of the local print shops. Queue eye ball popping, you are charging how much?! for a five by seven realization. Ugh. And there was no time to bulk print online. ARGH.

If I was going to pay a lot, I decided I was going to get something extra out of it. I decided to use Shutterfly* and have them mail the cards directly.

* Disclaimer, that’s an affiliate link. If anyone clicks on it and signs up I can order more discounted Christmas cards.

Entering the mailing address was a giant pain in butt, but all the addresses were saved, which should make this much easier in future years, should we decide to do it again. The final per-card price ended up being about 40 cents more than printing locally would have been, which seems worth it. Next year I’ll keep an eye out for a coupon. I’m sure the prices are better much earlier in the season.

I am so grateful I decided to attack that Christmas to-do list early. I kept up the momentum from Monday, and completed the Cinnamon rolls, and that hand print craft project before the girls had off from School, which meant I could go to bed early and get plenty of rest. Or at least that was the theory. You know what they say about the difference between theory and practice: in theory there is no difference, in practice there always is. As long as the kids are small, getting as much done early as possible will be a necessity.

But what we’re lacking in sleep, we’re making up for in good memories.

We did a Mommy, Daughter bake-a-thon! Nicole has been taking a cooking class at school, and was eager to help me with both the cinnamon rolls and the cookies. She brushed the melted butter on the rolls, sprinkled on the cinnamon sugar mixture, and cracked the eggs. She was my very eager little sous chef.

We visited Santa! The last two years Nicole has been a bit wary of the bearded guy in the red suit. She was excited to meet the big guy last year, up until the moment came to sit on his lap. Nicole was a mix of nervous and excited again this year, but this time it was the excitement that won out. She asked Santa for a “purple present” and a “blue present”. We never did get a smile out of Alexis, but she didn’t cry either. I think having Nicole near by was the only thing that kept the tears at bay.

We did Photos! Well, we tried at least, and we have funny out takes. Maybe taking our family photo after Christmas like last year will become our tradition.

Hope you all have a wonderful Holiday & Happy New Year!

Playing with angles

After finishing the Christmas cards just last Wednesday, I decided to power through the rest of my to-do list. I stayed up late finishing the rest of our (online) shopping, and have been carving out little blocks of time to wrap presents. For the first time in a long time I am actually d.o.n.e with our Christmas preparations well in advance of the actual day. Getting things done actually helped with my feeling of being burned out, which is a bit ironic given that when I’m feeling burnt out I don’t really want to do anything. I’m evening having fun picking up my camera again.

There’s still a few photos I want to take. I know, I know, I am hopeless. The highest priority photo for me is a family photo by the tree. Last year it was taken a few days after Christmas, and we can certainty do that again, but it’d be nice to have the presents in the background. I also want to do another round of Cookies by the tree. We did some by the white light tree this morning, but my camera settings weren’t quite right. Something tells me I’ll have two willing participants to retake those any time I choose. *grin*

I decided to push back the non-Christmas crafts & photos until the new year. After all, The girls footprints will likely be the same size in January as they are now. I say likely because a little miss is now in size 3 shoes.

Now I can sit back and relax in the evenings (or, more realistically, work on my start-up) and go to bed at a reasonable hour so I can actually enjoy the big day with my family. I may even have enough time bake a batch of Grandma’s Cinnamon Rolls. I haven’t made them in years.