Here are our activities, in no particular order, mostly. I still have to print them out and package them with chocolate and a Bible verse for each day (thank you Daily Thread Katie for that one!).

The importance here is not on rushing to complete an activity or to tick something off a list (remember this, me, please, and don’t make yourself crazy). The importance is to spend time celebrating the season with the people in your life who matter most. If you don’t need to entertain and delight children, entertain yourself and decorate (or don’t!) to your heart’s content.

1. celebrate the season with friends (we have friends with kids coming over tomorrow night to play and create and just enjoy each other’s company)

2. bring in the tree and put lights on that sucker

3. paint fingernails and toenails red and green (we like to alternate and add white dots for decoration–this is a swell nightly activity for when we have a sitter and are out for a holiday party)

4. make it snow in the house (my husband hates this. He thinks it looks creepy. The kids adore it, and so do I.)

5. sew ornaments (if you know me already, you’ll recall that I’m very partial to doves and birds–all of our Christmas decorations are in storage right now as we attempt to sell our house, so we may just make all our ornaments this year)

6. make a paper chain

7. make a wreath (I’m thinking paper)

8. make the house smell like Christmas (we simmer cinnamon sticks and spices in water on the stove–honestly, this one doesn’t much impress the kids anymore)

9. make salt dough ornaments (if you have small children, salt dough hand and footprints make the best grandparent gift tags ever; if you have bigger children, be prepared to cut out dinosaur shapes with exacto knives!)

10. hot chocolate stirred with candy canes (we like Williams Sonoma peppermint hot chocolate)

11. family pictures with antlers and elf hats (or some such silliness)

12. watch Christmas movies (another good babysitter activity)

13. write a letter to Santa

14. stitch a hankie (or a set of ‘em) for a gift (I am thinking pima gingham homemade hankies for manpeople we like)

15. make our own wrapping paper (we have a never-ending roll of white butcher paper from the school supply store; potato stamps, etc., are great, but so is just scribble scrabble or fine art from kids–everyone loves this)

16. make and mail cards for our friends (cards specifically from the kids, not our main cards)

17. make and decorate sugar cookies (will link you to a great-looking recipe when the internet is not so incredibly slow)

18. Callaway Gardens for the lights! (a weekend activity, I suppose, and the only one we might not be able to squeeze in)

19. Local lights tour (we love this)

20. wrap/label/deliver teacher gifts (my children LOVE handing out their teacher gifts)

21. decorate our doors (we use the big roll of white butcher paper to make huge Christmas trees and add cut out ornaments)

22. call grandparents and sing Christmas songs (a big hit)

23. put out gifts for our wonderful mail lady (she prefers chocolate)

24. Christmas Eve services, read the Christmas story

For comparison, here’s my Advent post from long ago. I am too lazy to figure out how to convert the pictures right now. Some of the old activities are better than the ones here, especially if you have really small kids.

Honestly, keeping up with some of this drives me nuts. I make sure to carefully consult the calendar to work around obligatory parties–the last 10 weeks of the calendar year sort themselves into madness starting in about September and I resent the intrusion on my family time. At the same time, I like people to visit us when we ask them, so I try to do the same when they ask for my time and sparkling, witty company (hah).

Happy holidays. Be well. All that matters is that you spend time with those you love (or can tolerate).

This time nine years ago, I was sitting at a nearby restaurant with my husband and mother-in-law, fully aware (but so very unaware) that I was heading to the hospital to have my first child at the crack of dawn on 11/20/2000. She was completely upside down, despite attempts at an external cephalic version (for those who arrive here after googling that phrase: unless you have an epidural and plan to have a baby right then, they rarely work for first babies, I think) and huge because of what I believe to be undiagnosed gestational diabetes (diagnosed with it for the second pregnancy–I think I somehow cheated the test the first time).

I didn’t sleep well.

She wasn’t born until after 10 a.m.

She was perfect, except for froggy legs and knees or double jointed hips that kept her knees up by her shoulders when she wasn’t swaddled.

She has been nearly perfect every single day since then.

Tomorrow, my very wonderful girl, the same one who danced in a ballet on her eighth birthday (and who dined, afterwards, at the same restaurant we sat at the night before she was born), is heading to Atlanta with her Daddy-Dad. Saturday, they’re going to New York for two nights, to experience a world of excitement and wonder the likes of which she’s never known.

She’s a reader, a drawer, a ballerina, no longer a competitive horseback rider. She’s the rarest of souls and my favorite kind of person in the world (really–I have written about it before here). She is the kind of person who just IS. She doesn’t bring any problems to the table and she just likes to be and to do and to go. I told another mother that I am jealous of that personality (her son is the same way–he brought her a gift of beads and old string from a Paris flea market this past spring). Then I took a minute to think and said, instead, that perhaps it’s better to be the parent to that child! Life is easy for the parent of an easy child.

I have never visited NYC. My husband has, but not for years and years. I am just provincial enough to worry about their trip, but the worry is subsiding. Last week, I couldn’t sleep because of it. Tonight, I’m just cooking the requested Birthday Meal (homemade mac and cheese–reference Ina’s Grownup Mac and Cheese recipe–I’ll put it here for you with my changes soon) and providing a few wrapped gifts and some divine cupcakes (choc with choc buttercream, of course).

I forget that I am a genuine adult a whole lot of the time. In fact, during a serious emergency last year where I was the go to adult, the first things I said were, “I need an ambulance and I need a real adult.” I forget that I am old enough to have my name on a mortgage and to have a Nine Year Old Daughter. God bless her.

Many of our favorite children’s books end up at our house after I see them on the internet and decide to have our local indie bookstore order them for us. I try to support my favorite bookstore because it’s the sort of place that will hunt and hunt and hunt all over until they locate the perfect fat Henry Darger book and where it might live in the world (and exactly how it can come live with me).

The thing about the books you read to your children is that the more the book appeals to you, the less onerous the task of reading aloud is. I know–reading aloud to your wee bairns is a fantastically fun task and you never read with one eye on the clock worried about the precious moments of time its eating up. You are a better person than I am. But, the more I like the book (or three) we’re reading right then, the better I am at reading it with great joy. The more joy my children get from me, the more they want to read and write and make fun, silly books of their own. Hunt down books that make you happy to read them.

Everyone at my house adores Oliver Jeffers. The man is a genius. The Incredible Book-Eating Boy is a masterpiece of collage artwork and simplicity and the story is hysterical. The page near the beginning when our protagonist , Henry, accidentally licks a book instead of his popsicle because he’s looking away from his food and instead at his cat making a stinky poo on the floor? HYSTERICAL. Even the littlest kid can tell that the poo is especially stinky, too. There are wavy stink lines radiating from the poop. Radiating stink lines mean seriously stinky stuff.

Later in the book, when our hero has eaten way too many books, he begins to go green, Greener, GREENEST, when: BORK! (The Irish word for “barf.”) At my house, we all like to make a very loud vomiting noise. We are successful at this and we know it because one or both of the dogs always goes running from the room.

We have all of Jeffers’ books and we give them as gifts, either in stacks (to those we love) or singly (to those we love but are not related to by blood or marriage). If you want a first taste of Jeffers’ work, I suggest you dive in with The Incredible Book-Eating Boy. Pay special attention to the back cover. (I love a publishing company whose designers go out of their way to make a book reflect the work. Love.)

P.S.: In blog-related business, I changed up my list of links to include blogs I look at nearly every day. In fact, I even logged into google whatever yesterday and put these blogs into my google reader. Before yesterday, I didn’t know what google reader was. I am learning Deeply Important Internet Things.

I am knitting a scarf with my son’s initial on it in a contrasting color. I am already past the initial, but I didn’t do a very good job–I just carried the yarn across the back of the scarf, which doesn’t look particularly attractive, but I figured carrying the yarn would look better than a million woven-in ends (two to four per row of knitting).

I pulled the carried over yarn in the back too tight, though, and the initial part of the scarf is a little bunched up. Also, the red initial legs are bunched up because they are essentially just sitting on top of the charcoal grey yarn that is the main scarf color. Is there a better way to knit another color into something? Is there a tutorial somewhere? I suspect there is a better way to do this and I am just not able to picture it mentally.

***

Next: many thanks to the intrepid Front Porch Studio for updating my blog in two ways. She put in a working RSS feeder (I still do not use an RSS feeder myself, but I understand it’s a thing of beauty and efficiency) and she updated my wordpress dealie to modern ages so that I can blog from my phone (who knew this was possible?)

Ms. Front Porch Jessica is best known for her graphic design and her fantastic blog headers are what drew me to her via twitter (yes. I tweet. I am semi-embarrassed to admit it, but I do.) I didn’t change up my header (and she didn’t make my dorky header–it’s just a photograph I took one day with some fabric I like and a clicky pencil. It’s me. Dorky and a mess. She definitely wouldn’t want credit for that. But she made things work properly behind the scenes for a good price and for that I am grateful and well-pleased. Jessica also has a blog, The Love List. Check it out.

I am trying to work out the best Advent list ever.

I want to incorporate two things: actual advent activities (I don’t know about you, but it’s hard to come up with interesting but doable activities for every day in December leading up to Christmas!) and calendar-style delivery systems.

I love all the Pottery Barn-style advent containers with cute drawers, etc., but I want mine to be homemade.

SO.

If you have thoughts and suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

I believe you may find some lovely pricing deals at Fontaine Maury right now on the fantastically popular melamine plates.

I’m pretty keen on the melamine trays, myself,but I will be adding the plates to my household and as gifts for others I deem worthy, not so much of the expense, but of the style and coolness. Not everyone is, you know.

I have personally manhandled a great deal of Fontaine Maury merchandise and marvel at the innovation. I expect to wallpaper a powder room in a mighty fine personalized silhouette wallpaper in the near future. Or a year. WhatEVER.

OH! Also. I might have things to say. I have written and failed to publish two blog posts in the last 10 days. Give me liberty or give me… Well. How about this instead: I keep paying for this place and I might as well man up and say what I mean.

Hi! You look mahvelous.

If you were giving a wedding gift to someone who was over 35 and you wanted it to be awesome, what would you give?

I have a fantastical set of Alvin & Holmes silverplate flatware in a pattern called Century (24 knives and spoons and a dozen of everything else and serving pieces) that I bought at an antique store in 2000 for $65. It would retail at a minimum of $400 or $500 today. It’s even in a great storage box.

I want to change up my silver usage ( we use great old silverplate everyday) and have bought a bit of Rogers & Williams Lincoln pattern (love the big, flat knives) and am shopping for cheap Grecian pattern. Don’t get me wrong: I haven’t been in Target since October, at the latest. I think it might even be September.

I might need to just get the Century out of the box and use it everyday. It’s a great set, tho, and an amazing wedding present. But, she might not appreciate it. I know YOU would appreciate it, but…

So, what to give?

I am afraid to give monogrammed gifts, but I am also thinking about a couple of sets of monogrammed bar glasses. We gave dinner and cocktail napkins for a shower gift (remind me to link you to the best source ever).

Pictures if my home internet ever improves. Second ball skirt coming for February!

Making: 2 knit hats, 1 knit scarf, Black Apple dolls (see the PDF and the lovely tutorial from Martha Stewart) and more kid clothes.

Life is busy and so good. I wish you well and I send you love and admiration and gibsons with vodka.

Almost…

I’m going out tonight in a fluffy silk ball (sorta) skirt that I made today all by my lonesome. It’s deep cream (cafe au lait, maybe?) and lined in a light teal. It’s a little, uhm, big. It’s fluffy. I’m wearing it with a white tee shirt (tucked in) and a black cashmere cardigan with black sequins down the front. Old school, baby. Black silk strappy shoes.

C C C C C C C C

(pushing the “C” button cccc c for the Crabcake, who is copyediting right next to me as I type–by the by, he’ll be FOUR in two months)

Please take your face off of my computer, dear boy. Thank you.

I learned to bind a quilt, so in the past two weeks, I’ve bound one exquisite quilt (seriously–it’s a work of art, covered in hand embroidery) and I’m almost done binding a big quilt for the Girlchild. It’s very simple–two big pieces of fabric on one side and a very old, very soft sheet from Goodwill on the other side. I turned the sheet over the mute the colors a bit. The quilt would probably fit a queen-sized bed. I machine-stitched big diamonds on it and I’m on the 3rd of 4 sides stitiching the binding down. So proud of myself!

I made each child a cute outfit for Christmas and have a pile of sewing to do for them. I’m about to start on very fluffy Easter outfits (gotta finish this quilt and one more needs to be quilted and bound–I am on SUCH a roll) for them that they can wear to/in a wedding next summer.

What’s on my list o’resolutions for 2009? Same as it ever was: to improve. To keep tennis and exercise at least slightly on the forefront. To cook more. To get our bathrooms redone, landscape a bit and MOVE. We turned over our guest bedroom to the kids–it’s their playroom now–and our house feels bigger, thank goodness.

Improve.

What about you?

Finally, to my kind cheese straws commenter from yesterday or recently: I’m so glad you’re still enjoying the recipe. That was my sole holiday baking desire. Didn’t cook anything wonderful, but wanted to. Sewed instead.

Read: Nelson DeMille’s The Gold Coast. Recommend. Am on the sequel now. Gotta go get dressed. Must also make more skirts for self.

Happy 2009!