Holiday Grand Plan

It's that time again. Holiday Gran Plan is in full swing.  Week one started with making lists and cleaning off the front porch.

I'm a little behind (big surprise huh - LOL)  The plan started Sept. 1st. While I'm still working on week one, my friends at Magical Holiday Home are starting week two.

Any who. Let me tell you what I've done so far.  I sent out text messages to family and friends earlier today letting them know that I have started planning for this years's Christmas Eve dinner.  Everyone responded within minutes.  I was able to get RSVPs as well as updated address information.  I think my family is more excited than I am.

With that out of the way I started working on other lists: Gifts, Parties/Entertaining, Menus, Freezer Meals and shopping lists.

This year I have 35 gifts to make.  My dilemma now is coming up with gift ideas.  I've given some really great gifts in the last 10 plus years but don't have a clue for this year.  So far I have only come up with 15 gift ideas.  I think I'm losing my touch. hahaha  Hopefully some ideas will come to me.  I'll need to somehow stir up a few conversations about gifts without them knowing that I'm looking for ideas.

After making a list of names and budgeting how much to spend for each person, I then started working on a calendar I created where I plug in all activities I have planned for the next four months.  Tomorrow is my mom's birthday and my brother and I are taking her out to dinner.  Then on the 18th is my brother's birthday and his wife and my mom have been working together to plan a dinner for him.  I have a wedding in October and I am hosting an Autumn Celebration Dinner with a few friends that month.  Also this year I will be hosting Thanksgiving as well as Christmas Eve dinner (This should be fun).  The menu is all planned for Thanksgiving but I still have Christmas Eve and autumns dinner to do. I will talk more about my plans for Thanksgiving on my Harvest blog.

Next I moved on to making a list of freezer meals.  These will come in handy as the holidays get closer, not to mention busy.  There won't be time to create good home cooked meals regularly.  I'm going out later this week to start shopping for some of the ingredients I will need.  My meals will include lasagna, homemade chili (my favorite comfort food during the colder months), chicken enchiladas, chicken & biscuit casserole (another favorite), calzones, meatloaf, chicken & dumplings and pizzas.  The pizzas and lasagna I think will be store bought...making it less meals I'll have to prepare.  This year will be the first time I make chicken & dumplings.  I love it but never made it myself.  I was worried about making chicken enchiladas and storing them in the freezer, but after talking to the ladies at MHH, I learned that I can freeze them.

Tomorrow I hope to finish all of my lists.  In addition to the two menus, I still have my shopping list and goodies list to get started.  I think I may have already started on the shopping list.  I'll have to check my notebook.

112 Days to Christmas!?

Are my eyes deceiving me?  Is this really true?  Christmas will be here before I know it.

Me thinks me better get it in gear.  

Lewis Dances For Final Time At Victory Parade

This has nothing to do with Christmas but I had to share this. My hometown is going crazy today and I love it!

Lewis Dances For Final Time At Victory Parade

Finally

I tried to get this posted on Sunday before the Ravens games started but my internet started acting up as it has been very windy.

Anyway I thought I would share some pictures of my home and job decorated for the holidays. 

The new kitchen

More counter space to do all my food and baking prep.  If you remember, before the kitchen remodel,  I had little to no counter space.

This ended up being my main tree as I just could not find the type of tree I wanted (Actually I waited til the last minute to look for a tree.)  LOL I just had so much going on.

This is the tree in my diningroom.

I had a different idea of how I wanted to dress up my coffee table, but I ended up using one of my Nativity scenes instead.

This is the foyer.  This picture was taken before I added lights to the wreath and the topiarys so that the area is lit at night. (I have an idea to cover that wall with some nice fabric. Just haven't found the right pattern yet.)

The hallway:  Pulled out my trusty dollar store Christmas socks. I've had these socks for about 15 years and they are still in great condition.  Notice the closet doors?  They're new!  No more dingy, ugly metal doors. Yey!

This was one of the crafts I had on my to-do list that I actually got around to completing.  New wreaths for the bedroom windows.

My apologies for the blurry photo. I used my cell phone to take this picture.  My phone used to take very good, clear pictures. Not sure what I did to it to mess it up.  

These are the supplies I used:    4 picture frames, several packs of berry picks, 4 red bows, 6 things of garland and a spool of red ribbon.  I already had the berry picks.  

Before I continue let me say that the picture frames in this second photo were plastic and I with my heavy hands broke them attempting to wrap them with the garland.  So I ended up using some nice wooden frames I got from Walmart. Plus they were larger - I think 8 x 14 - and I love the end result.

All you do is wrap the frames with garland. Because the frames were larger than the original ones, each frame used about 1 1/2 bundle of garland. Next I just attached a bow in the lower right corner and I added  a few of the berry picks around the bow.  The final step was to cut some lengths of ribbon to hang them in the windows.

I got the idea from a picture on Pinterest.  The actual website can be found here. (You will have to scroll way down the page).  As you can see, her's is more involved and looks beautiful.  I sometimes don't have the patience and tend to look for simple, easy and fast, craft projects. Plus when I want my frames back all I have to do is remove the bows and berries and unravel the garland.

As I'm going through my photos I realized that I didn't take many pictures. My mood was up and down this past Christmas thinking about my grandmother.  This was the first Christmas without her.

Now on to work.  This year I decided to decorate the office in the theme of my favorite, hometown  football team, the Baltimore Ravens. So glad I did. WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!,  Singing:  Ooooooh, Oooh - Oooh - Oooh- Ooooh,  Oooh.   Ooooooh, Oooh - Oooh - Oooh- Ooooh,  Oooh.  LOL

The price for sports ornaments were too rich for my blood. So I came up with a solution: make my own ornaments.   I found some images on the internet. Copied, pasted and resized the images then printed them on whole sheets of label paper.  After I cut out the images, I took some purple ornaments I bought at a dollar store and attached the labels.  Voila!  Ravens ornaments. (Note: If you try this, to make them last, you can use decoupage or a mixture of crafter's glue (Elmers) and water as a sealer.)

Using my computer and a program from Wordperfect (Corel Presentations) , I used another Ravens image and created this banner to cover the over-sized board behind my desk. I cut the letters out using heavy card stock paper and taped everything on black and purple wrapping papers I found in the dollar store.

I covered the door to my office with this Ravens wrapping paper.  I had been looking everywhere trying to find rolls of Ravens paper but had no luck. I found this paper online for $10+ (included S & H).  Do you know a week later, I was leaving out of the Kmart behind my job when I saw a box filled with rolls of this paper for $7.99. SMH.

With another roll of wrapping paper, I cover my boss' door.  The paper was long enough but not wide enough so I trimmed it out with some purple metallic garland.

Everyone in the building came to see my office and loved what they saw. I did. So much so that another office decided to decorate in purple too.  See.  

I still have all of my decorations up in the office. Too scared to take them down now that my Ravens are in the superbowl.

Well that's all I have.  Next.  Deciding what I will do to celebrate Rudy Day this Friday.

Bring on Brady (Call Me Maybe Parody)

Made a Few Changes

I have spent the last two days playing around with my blog.  I've been using Blogger for several years but still do not know what all that it has to offer. So I'm trying to learn more about it. One thing I did learn how to do was import blogs. I imported  posts from my 'Hey Rudolph' blog onto this blog and then deleted that one. I had not posted on there I think in over a year and I didn't want to lose my posts.  So now you will see Rudy Day activities on here too.

I am also learning how to add gadgets like Share and how to change the layout. I'm not quite happy with the layout currently being used but I'll play around with it some more until I find that perfect one.

I've been so busy with 'life' that I have not had a chance to post pictures from Christmas 2012.  I hope to do it later today, but right now I need to get ready for a doctor's appointment.  See you later.

Making Some Changes

Spending the day updating my blog.