Christmas Craziness

Alrighty fellow Bloggers. I luv ya but you are truly a bad influence. You're those "kids" that mom never wanted me to hang around with because I'd "jump off a bridge" with them. A little background....

A month or two ago, I decided to play it low-key for Christmas. Lots going on in life and didn't want the added stress. I told my kids that I was scaling back and they were good with that. I planned to significantly cut back the rest of the Christmas list. But about two weeks ago, I thought, "How 'bout I just make a little something for everyone to let them know I'm thinking about them." Well, you all know where that leads, don't you? A hat here... an apron there... a pair of pj pants over there.... and before you know it, I have a list of to-dos that I don't have a prayer of getting to-done and in the mail by Christmas. I finally recognized Thursday that I wasn't going to get some of the presents that needed to be mailed to their recipients before Christmas so I sent emails saying Santa B would be a little late this year. Whew.... Relief fell off my shoulders and I was loving Christmas again. As of last night, I finished all the projects except for the bunny hat for my almost-one-year-old niece, which I figured I would finish over the weekend and get that last package in the mail on Monday.

I went to bed last night feeling good but still eyeing a very long list of things I needed to do today. Woke up early, got ahead of schedule and so I dared to look at Bloglines. OMG, the CUTE projects I saw!!! "Hmmmmm, maybe I can squeak out a few more gifts."

So off 16 yr old daughter and I went to finish up her shopping and pick up a few more project supplies. She helped me pick out yarn for a Calorimetry (Thanks, Cheryl!) or maybe Quant for her older sister and little did she know she picked out yarn for her own headband, too.

This yarn store is also a quilt store so we picked out fabric to make some "beach themed" pillowcases (thanks to the fun pillowcase "kits"Allison sent me recently) for my parents to take with them as they head to Florida for the winter.

I also still need to make a pair of PJ pants for my son and daughter and an apron for my friend but I don't need those until Christmas Day so I have TONS of time to finish!

OH! My shopping is officially done and listen to this funny Pay-It-Forward story. Today, my daughter pulls into a Starbucks drive-thru where she orders a Frappuccino. I remembered Sherry at Loopy Ewe's story about paying-it-forward at a Starbucks by paying for the car behind you and told my daughter to tell the cashier that I would pay for the car behind us, too. But no one pulled in behind us. We arrived at the window to pay and the guy says, "The lady ahead of you paid for your Frappuccino and said to tell you Merry Christmas." Tables turned! WHAT A HOOT!!