Busy, busy, busy

I have been a sewing fool this week. I bought my daughter a bunk bed at Overstock for her American Girl dolls over the summer and put it away for Christmas. Last week I found it buried deep in the garage and decided I should probably not wait until Christmas week to put it together. After I got it assembled I realized there was no way I could give it to her with the hideous bedding it came with so I set off to Joanne's to find some super cute fabric and embellishments. Now I should tell you that I really don't sew. I have a machine and I have somehow produced cornice boards for my family room, kitchen and daughter's playroom but I am really not quite sure how it actually happened. I can't read the patterns so I don't even bother with them anymore. I just basically eye it up and then try to recreate it. So, anyhow I returned home with my fabulous fabrics thinking the whole way home that I should have just bought her another bed from American Girl and then I wouldn't be worrying about all of this right now. For what I paid for the fabric and the bunk beds I could have. Once I got the fabric home I had a momentary panic that I had really gotten in over my head this time but I am proud to say that I have stuck to it and I am almost done. Once I got into it I also realized the bed set came with a little closet. So far I have made curtains and a back wall for the closet, two mattresses, and both comforters. All I have left to do is the pillows. I think I am going to make one big one for each bed and then two smaller throw pillows so there will be six to make total. I should have done them tonight but I am a little fried. I will definitely put up a picture when it is done. Also a picture of the dinosaur is coming as soon as my daughter brings it home from school as I forgot to take his picture before sending him off with her.
I have my wrapping all done except a few packages that arrived today. I may have to run out for something else for my husband and I need stocking stuffers but the rest of the shopping is done. I have made four types of cookies - still have a long way to go with my baking. I still need to do all my grocery shopping though and think that will be done maybe Monday - Friday if I get to it but I doubt it. I have most of my Christmas cards done and mailed. Of course somehow I didn't order enough cards this year and I am about 30 cards short. It's too late now to order more so I went through our list with a fine tooth comb and made some major cuts. Brought me back to wedding planning days when husband and I had to fine tune our guest list. Anyway, the cards have started to pour in and wouldn't you know it just about every card we've received so far is from someone I cut from our list. Now what! I think I am going to suck it up and go to the store to buy cards and send out to the people we cut from the list. I thought once I had a child I graduated to the photo card and no longer had to write anything but this year I guess will be different. So, the cards are done - mostly. I skimped on decorations this year. I didn't put everything up and one of the main things that got axed is my Nana's Christmas village. It is a major undertaking and in this house I don't have a great location for it - there are soooo many houses - so I put some of it on top of my china cabinet and the rest on top of a book shelf in my family room. Both require being up and down on the ladder and that was just not going to happen this year. I have some boughs for the banister that I may still put up and I will probably decorate my daughter's room but mostly the house is decorated. I may sound like everything is all together but the truth is that something has to give and lately that has been house cleanliness. To the naked eye my house is clean but I know it's not. Right now it is a mess and just about every room needs to be cleaned. The laundry is piled so high on the spare room bed that my daughter was using it as a mountain for her dolls to sled down. It's all clean just not folded or put away. I gave up my cleaning lady right after Christmas last year. I was done with my last surgery and having her come clean my house made me feel like I still wasn't able. So in my effort to get my life back to some semblance of normal I let her go and believe me there have been lots of times especially recently that I think someone should have stopped me. Clearly I wasn't in my right mind and had no business making such drastic decisions. So, that's some of what I have been up to. I have a couple other big things (major really) that have been in the works and taking up some time but I'll tell you about them the next time. So I hope you are all getting all of your prep done and are able to take a few minutes to sit and enjoy some of it all. I'm trying to!

Modge Podge

I just about modge podged my entire kitchen this evening. My daughter was given a research assignment on dinosaurs before Thanksgiving. She did the research before break and then she needed to make a model of the dinosaur she chose. So she made one out of model magic when we were at my mother's. She didn't bring it in on Monday because some of the pieces came apart during the flight home and need to be glued. I thought the model looked appropriate for something that a first grader would do. Well, apparently there must be some very talented first graders in her class because she came home on Monday and announced that she can not bring in her model because it is no where near as good as what the rest of her class is turning in. As she tells it, the other kids have turned in dinosaurs made out of legos almost as big as she is and other similarly fabulous creations. So, I agreed to help her make something else that she would feel more comfortable turning in. Her only request is that it be able to stand. So Monday I couldn't get her to work on it - she was just fried from the first day back. Last night she had art after school and by the time we got home she had enough time to choke down dinner and rush to Daisy scouts. So, tonight was the night. We came up with the idea to take a soda bottle and modge podge it with construction paper and then she wanted to use egg carton for feet. We're not sure what we're going to use for a tail yet. So tonight we modge podged and if you have ever used that stuff you know it is completely messy. So about half way through I decided that it probably wasn't such a good idea to use it directly on my granite counter tops so I started to clean up the area so we could put some wax paper down. Well, I'm not entirely sure how it got knocked off the counter because I really didn't think I bumped it but the entirely full container of modge podge went sailing off the counter top onto the floor and just basically exploded when it hit the ground. I had modge podge EVERYWHERE! It reminded me of the great chili explosion of 1999 in the all white kitchen of our apartment. Anyway after much clean up I think I have it all wiped up and I had to declare that we'd had enough modge podging for one night. Why can't parents just let their kids do their own projects. If they had than my daughter could have turned in her perfectly fine model magic dinosaur and we'd be done and my tree would have gotten decorated tonight. Oh well! I am such a hypocrite though because I'm certain that I am going to work on the project tomorrow while she is at school so all we have left to do after she gets home is slap that puppy together.

We're back!

We've actually been back since Sunday afternoon. I'm still not in the swing of things. I just can't seem to get going. It's got to be the pregnancy but I really don't remember feeling this way when I was pregnant with my daughter. I could literally just lie around all day. I just don't want to do anything and unfortunately I've got lots that needs to be done! I do have both Christmas trees up but neither have decorations on them yet and that's about the extent of what I have done for Christmas. My shopping is in a dire situation. Usually by now I have a major dent in my list and concrete ideas for what I want to get everyone. That is not the case this year. The doctor has deemed the mall off limits (although I am considering renting a wheel chair to go one day). I wasn't able to do any Black Friday shopping either and I usually make a big dent that day. I also usually kick off my shopping the first weekend in November at the Junior League Holiday Market but this year I was on bed rest and missed it. I don't like internet shopping but I did some yesterday. We'll see what I actually end up with. I find it hard to keep track of what I've bought that way and I just don't like it. It took me all day to make a purchase at American Girl and even then I couldn't get everything I wanted. I would put it in my cart and when I went to check out it wouldn't be there. Ugh!! I don't know what I'm going to do. I've got to get this shopping done but I'm thinking most of it will end up being done last minute.