The Careys: Prepping for Christmas: Mr. and Mrs. Claus vs. Elflings

Doug and I have this awful habit of coming up with the most elaborate, time-consuming projects to give out as Christmas gifts. These ideas casually spring into our head on or around December 1st.

Couple these fun ideas with the following "must-do's":

Christmas gift shopping (in time to get holiday gifts to Arizona and Nevada before the Christmas holiday / and for the least possible shipping charges),
Decorate tree.
Holiday party attending (school, day care, friends and work),
Trying to savor a few holiday family moments
An occasional baking night for holiday goodies
Wrapping the kids' toys
Laundry and packing for two weeks in Michigan
Schedule appointment to have Christmas pictures taken for Christmas card.
(Find outfits, trim up kids' hair for said Christmas card family portrait).
Send Christmas cards.
Preparations for heading out of town (which includes setting timers throughout the house, so any potential perps won't realize we're out of town. ;)
Contacting US Postal Service to put our mail on hold.
Contacting our Community Supported Agriculture organization, so they won't deliver vegetables to our front door while we're gone.
Cleaning my house so I don't leave it in a state that is seriously regrettable, should I perish in an automobile accident between here and Rochester Hills, Michigan. ;-)
Attend normal activities, keep kids fed, avoid getting sick. ;-)
Remember to give African dwarf frogs to our sweet neighbors with small bag of food before heading out of town.
"Keep calm and carry on."

And there you have our life in December! Oy!

This year, I decided the BEST gift for my sister would be a digital frame that included an SD card with all of our family pictures. My Dad and Dolly fortunately gave me a great start, with 1,200 pictures from their own digital frame. Piece of cake, right? Umm...Not so much.

I asked my Mom, Dad and Dolly for any other family pictures that Sherry would love. (Sidenote: A big thank you to Mom, Dad and Dolly for my badgering them to find the most memorable pictures and send to me). I thought I would just add any pictures that I had of Sherry's family to the existing collection from Dad and Dolly. Oh. Mi. Gosh.

A little sidebar: My Mom, knowing me all-too-well, has been sending me little dollar store photo albums filled with pictures, since Doug and I moved to Georgia in 1998, whenever there was a momentous occasion in the family. I scanned my little heart out after Thanksgiving, before Christmas, to turn pre-digital age pictures into .jpg files that could be saved to a 16 Gig memory card. 2,300 pictures later, my sister has a comprehensive collection of pictures that I ~~think~~ know she loves.

I know she likes her family pictures displayed throughout her house, so I thought this would be THE perfect gift for her. Knowing she might not be super geeked about the frame itself, I put a note on the frame package that said "Plug Me In." She cried when she plugged in the frame. At first, I don't think she realized how many pictures were actually included in this frame. It's hard to visualize 2,700 pictures! Doug asked me before Christmas if my goal was to "make Sherry cry." Well, not intentionally! :)

'You know how you just can't wait to give someone a gift that you know will be perfect for them? This was THE gift this year. I was SOOOO excited to give this to Sherry. More excited than any gift I could think of receiving myself this Christmas. There are now over 2,700 pictures on Sherry's frame. My Mom liked it so much, she wanted a copy. I liked it so much, I finally decided to break out the digital frame I bought a year ago and put it to use.

In addition to this gift, I decided to get really crafty and come up with a few different recipes. I saw Williams' Sonoma sold a "Pecan Pie In-A-Jar" made by the Saba River Company. I took it on as a challenge, baking a ~~few~~ four different pecan pies to come up with just the right recipe to put in a jar. I took two of the "good" pies to Liam's day care Christmas party. Everyone raved about the pies! Everything needed to make the pie is included in the jar, with exception to eggs, butter and a storebought deep-dish pie crust. I absolutely love the labels, from http://www.myownlabels.com/).

(Note: It was unbelievable how hard it was to find smooth-sided Ball quart jars. So that was added to my endless"To Do" list. I didn't want an embossed/bumpy jar since I had to affix a label to it. Michael's sells smooth-sided ones, thankfully.)

My unlabeled jar on the left, vs. the Williams Sonoma jar on the right:

I also wanted to make a winter fruit jam of some sort. After my Google search came up lacking, I used a recipe I found and then tweaked it to include specific fruits. (Fresh cranberries, apples, pears, dried pineapple, orange, lemon). It turned out super yummy! It's my take on a cranberry walnut relish that makes it's appearance often at holiday tables. I guess I could technically add walnuts and make it a conserve in the future. Hmm.

The gift Doug made this year was an oven rack tool that he turned on his lathe. They are beautiful! It has a fork-type tip to it, so you can push an oven rack in without having to touch it. Above the fork area, there is a hook cut out of the wood, so you can grab the oven rack and pull it toward you without getting burned. He made about 9 of them. They were all made out of different, contrasting woods. He actually drew up a prototype for it and everything! So it was seriously custom-made. He finished them and put the polyurethane coat on them the MORNING. BEFORE. WE. LEFT. for Michigan. Everyone seemed to like them. Aunt Jean commented that hers was too pretty to use. I hope they're useful to everyone that received them! These pictures honestly don't do them justice. Some wood even had a hint of purple in it.

And, the reason I wrote this post originally... Here is how the Carey kids prep for Christmas. This picture taken during the car ride to Michigan. :) Rough work, isn't it? ;-)