Sometimes Early Looks a Lot Like Late

I didn’t pull out the Easter decorations last year. I didn’t host a post-church family brunch. I didn’t color hard boiled eggs with the kids. Oh, we had a delightful celebration and I have no regrets whatsoever about the somewhat unorthodox way we made our observance, but that did not stop me from looking ahead to this year and planning a return to the Old Ways. I thought that certainly this year there would be decorations, there may well be a brunch – heck, I might even conduct my traditional frenzied search for last pair of white girl's tights anywhere in town.

These children own 17 types of adhesive products and yet they will steal my Scotch tape if I look away for so much as a second. They cannot be trusted.








Early guidance suggests that none of this will happen again this year. I've not dispensed with the critical pre-holiday planning stages, however. To my way of thinking, there’s nothing like the memory of a recently passed or about-to-be whiffed holiday to prompt progress toward the next time around. Women’s magazines advocate such an approach – buy Christmas wrap on December 26th and so forth – but I really feel that I’ve got the methodology down to an art. My procedure is as follows:

1. Six weeks before the day arrives, write a lengthy and elaborate list of projects to be completed. You might, for example, want to make your own wrappings out of quilting fabric or wish to potato-stamp bunny shapes on a hemp table runner. Maybe include both – there’s no need to be under-ambitious, I always say.
2. Purchase, recover from dusty underbed storage, or otherwise gather from the kids’ art bins the required supplies. If you require more than two adhesive products an angel gets her wings, so don’t be shy!
3. Pile said supplies on sideboard, end table or sofa, awaiting time (and energy) to use them.
4. Express gobsmacked shock as the holiday comes and goes while preparatory supplies go untouched on sideboard, end table or sofa. Wonder what you did with those 42 days, and then strike vague recall of unarticulated expectations at both home and work having chipped away at what had seemed to be abundant leisure.
5. Find time (and energy) the week after the holiday when the rest of one’s colleagues and friends are recovering from festive excess to complete the projects because there’s no way those things (see Step 3) are going to be put back under the bed. Too crowded under there anyway, what with all the pipe cleaners and felt, and fabric paint leftover from prior years.

It’s simple, really. While to the rest of the world I will appear to be ever so late with my adorable beaded springtime napkin rings and wooden eggs decoupaged with butterflies, I maintain that, no, I am quite prepared for next year. Bring it, April 8, 2012. I’ll be ready for you.

Old and Full of Days

I am tired. Like, seriously tired. I could point to any number of reasons why this is so, but I think I'll bump up the most pleasant right to the top of the list: I am tired because I am having too much darn fun. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. To the rest of the possible reasons for my tiredness (work, stress, money, health, diet, schedule, etc., etc., etc.), thank you for your application but the position has already been filled.

Looking at the calendar I can see not a single moment from now until well after New Year's Day when I cannot tell you right now where I will be and what I'll be doing, more or less. I don't mind this terribly much. Surprises and spontaneity are increasingly unpleasant experiences and I am pleased to be able to look ahead a few weeks and know that I need a box of Legos, a rubber frog, pink glitter, a roasted hunk o' beef, a blue t-shirt, a bottle of chocolate stout, or a football-themed sheet cake, and also precisely on which days these are true. Predictability is the order of the day.

With that in mind, the advanced date reminds me that it's time for my annual rant on gift-giving, homemade-edness and celebrations. Or, we can skip it and go for the following instead, my favorite sources and resources for holiday crafting and gifting fun (please note this SPOILER ALERT in the event that you are related and/or are in a gift giving relationship with me):

- Sew Mama Sew has launched its annual Handmade Holidays series of tutorials gathered from all corners of the web. Wonderful inspiration for homemade gifts for nearly any interest or need of which you can think and for just about any skill level. Don't forget to peruse the archives of previous years' series. My nieces and nephews are (probably; see also having lots of fun and near miss on complaining about the calendar) receiving keyrings made of fabric tied (ha!) to their interests and personalities, a project posted two years ago, I think. I'd like to make them the "Don't Get Out of Bed" pants from this year's collection, but I don't think my skills are up to it (yet).

- I am also making up a number of jars of Cowgirl Cookies, except mine won't be Cowgirl Cookies. Follow? What I mean is that I'm making Buffalo Sabres cookies (blue and yellow candies), Dalmatian cookies (black and white candies), UB Bulls cookies (blue and white candies) and so on. That I have a brand spanking new Wegmans grocery at hand, what with their 99 cent 5-lb. bags of flour and bulk candy section makes this fun, easy and inexpensive. I cannot WAIT for my Sabres-obsessed nephew to open his cookie jar and start bugging my sister to bake 'em up right away. That's the kind of aunt I am.

- I have rediscovered ShrinkyDinks, a craft of my childhood. They're back! Who knew? Well, my five-year old knew and now announces with great regularity that she'd like to "shrink some dinks". For holiday gift giving of the aforementioned cookie mixes or jams or spiced honey or dipping sauce, I'll be making little Shrinky Dink tags that can then be saved or put on a tree or whatever. A small tangible reminder of the consumable gift, you know? A search through Microsoft Powerpoint or via Google Images for whatever key word one seeks (Buffalo Sabres, Dumpling, or Honey, for example) will likely yield an embarrassment of traceable riches for coloring and subsequent shrinking (remember, this method is NOT for commercial application, let's not take food off of designers' plates or run regrettably afoul of licensing laws, yes?). I'm no artist and if my tags work out o.k., I'll post some pictures.*

- For your baking pleasure, please see my friend Susie J at Christmas Baking. Every year I say it but it bears repeating: the gingerbread recipe is super-plus fantastic and should all the seasonal merriment makes you sleepy you could do worse than whip up a batch of mokka in response.

- If, like me, you need a gift-giving back up plan and you'd rather it didn't involve traffic, lines, or, heck, even bothering to dress I recommend Etsy and Artfire. I bought a number of gifts from Etsy last year (and in the time since) and have been pleased with each and every one. It can be hard to find what you need or want, and judicious application of key words goes a long way.

- Finally, don't forget YouTube as a source for wildly inventive tutorials on everything from knitting to making candy wreaths to gingerbread house hacks. Expanding my use of the site from nostalgic explorations of both teen-dream and more recent crushes (!) I can profess a legit educational application the type of which I'd heard about but not quite endorsed. I may set my children to work making smaller candy wreaths for their teachers (or at least as much of the wreaths as they will before a ravenous desire for the candy supplies and/or more complaining than I am willing to tolerate set in).

This weekend is the elementary school fund raising auction. Brainiac is feeling very competitive that our contribution of a Scotch-and-Cigar basket (designed to tempt the men away from the spa outings and girls-night-out packages) raises lots of money. For my part, I'm just looking forward to the first event of the rest of the year. With wine.

* Regular readers know better than to count on this. I'm always promising pictures and rarely deliver. Sorry.