It has been a real challenge to unpack my house, and prepare for Christmas, while working full-time!
I’ve been making lots of lists to ensure I completed my top priorities on time. All of the boxes are unpacked and out of the house. I don’t have everything placed where I want, but I’m ready to move my focus to Christmas.
We got off to a bumpy start: the community water pumped died, so we were without water on Saturday morning. Then, Jackson attempted to plug the ‘strip plug’ into the wall, with an adapter. He blew out the power to the entire house and burned up the strip plug. Luckily, the movers stood up my ‘big’ tree. It is an older pre-lit tree and the lights have died. I picked up some 220v lights in Lithuania, so I wrapped those around the tree, and plugged them right into the wall. No transformer or adapter needed! Win! I put the ornaments on the trees, set up the nativity, and hung our stockings on the window grills.
Next up was the baking. Jackson and I rolled out, baked, and decorated 9 batches of cookies. We gifted the gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies to neighbors, teachers, coaches, the bus driver and the bus monitor. I put the cookies in clear cellophane bags with red ribbon. I baked peanut butter cup cookies for the neighborhood cookie exchange. I think we ate all the cookies while visiting – there wasn’t much to exchange at the end! I also made white chocolate-raspberry scones early one morning – they were AMAZING! I put the warm scones in little kraft boxes with tea bags, gingerbread cookies, and jams – tied up with red and white striped ribbon with nutcracker tags – to make cute little ‘take away’ afternoon tea boxes for colleagues. I also roasted some almonds in cinnamon and sugar. I put those in clear cellophane bags, tied them up with a red ribbon, and attached a gold tag for my office mates and the Marines.
I somehow made time to whip up a batch of Pizzelles for Jackson (special request!), wrap up the Christmas gifts that will go under the tree, and I even purchased a few gifts to bring home. It was a mad scramble, but I (mostly) pulled it off!
