Hey, where'd Monday go?

OK, yesterday totally got away from me. Between a little online shopping and work, time just disappeared!

This past weekend was devoted to finishing my daughter's advent calendar.


I packed it and the 24 little ornaments to go in the pockets, and shipped it yesterday. Yes!

I also finished the left flip-top mitten and started the right one. Here's a picture of it "closed":


and one of it "open":


It feels really soft and warm. I still need to sew on a button or something for the loop to attach to, but I'll probably wait for my daughter to pick out what she wants.

On Sunday, My husband and I went to a Christmas tree farm and cut down our tree. It's only 8 feet this year...it seemed like most of the full trees were between 5 and 8 feet, while the taller trees were on the skinny side. Oh well, the one we picked has a nice shape, it's nice and full, and it has a nice top to put the star on (last year the tree was so big that we never got the star on it). We'll bring it into the house tonight and get the lights on it. It will take me a while to decorate it, but that's the fun part!

It's starting to look like Christmas inside. The stockings are hung and the advent calendars are up (yes, I have two: a quilted wall hanging that I made last year and a felt-and-sequins one that I made when my daughter was born in 1978). And I've hung the wreath on the front door.

I need to get serious about my baking. Over the weekend I bought the first onslaught of supplies from Trader Joes (nuts, dried fruit, chocolate, butter) and Safeway (flour, sugars, eggs). I got strange looks in both stores...what?! Haven't they seen anyone buy 8 pounds of butter or 20 pounds of flour before? LOL! (the scary part is that I'll have to make another run for eggs and butter before I'm done...)

Yes, I bake a lot, but these are my gifts to family and friends. And my gift list this year has 20 people on it. They will each get an assortment of cookies, biscotti, cakes, candied nuts, chocolate bark, and anything else I come up with. I've been doing this now for 20 years, so I've gotten it down to a science. This year I'm determined to take pictures of the whole thing to document the process. Who knows...maybe someday I'll stop doing it!