Christmas Countdown--December 14/15

I needed this post from Simple Mom today: The Top of Your Holiday To-Do List: Breathe.
Some good reminders there!!

We only have 10 days left till Christmas, and 11 days till we leave for Ohio. Yikes! I am determined to relax and enjoy the season, short though it is! I made some good progress today on Christmas stuff. I got all my letters/pictures mailed--all 53 of them. Yep, I guess we have a lot of family and friends! What a blessing to have so many special people in our lives. :) I also got most of one handmade gift completed! I just have the embellishing touches to finish now.

Thanks to all of you who gave me such awesome ideas on my post requesting little girl ideas! Some of the things suggested are things Julia already has (tea set, kitchen), but all along I've been wanting to get her some play food to go with the kitchen in the hopes that she might actually play with the kitchen more then. :) I just haven't been too enthused by the plastic play food I've seen. I've long admired the Melissa & Doug sets that Alicia mentioned, so I decided to pursue that idea a little more. I checked them out on Amazon and settled on the pizza party set as one I thought Julia would like a lot (hopefully!) but I didn't really want to order it online with so little time left till Christmas. So tonight, Jim graciously kept all 3 kids home and I went out shopping. I had to go to Walmart anyway, then I decided to check Marshalls because I know they get Melissa & Doug toys occasionally. I said a quick prayer before going in that I might find the set I wanted, and you know what? I DID! There was only one of them, and it although it was a couple bucks more than Amazon's price, I snapped it up. :) I also found a couple great little gifts for our nephew Darrin while I was there. Yay!! The ladies at the registers were commenting on how cute the pizza set was and that they hadn't seen it before. One of them figured it must have just come in today. I am thankful I was in the right place at the right time to get it! We did also buy the Cariboo game for Julia . . . Toys R Us was having a super sale on Hasbro games so we got an excellent deal on it--if any of you are in need of games, you might want to check there because there were some other family games like Cranium on sale too. I have another idea or two of things I might make for Julia also (if I have time, that is!) but I'm just really happy to have some good stuff for her at good prices too. :)

I just wanted to quickly share this link to a really cool site that my sister-in-law Joanne told me about. If you're into handmade things, you must check it out!! It's given me some awesome ideas for future presents. Here it is: One Pretty Thing. Enjoy!!!

On the docket for tomorrow: Finish the gift I started today. Make fudge. Wrap some presents. Hang the Christmas wreaths. Maybe put out some more decorations.

Oh, and in case you all were wondering, the big ice storm that hit New England last week missed us! We just got rain. But many people just an hour south of us or more are still without power; some won't get it back for a week or more. Needless to say, we were very thankful that it missed us!