I can’t believe how quickly this month is passing.  Normally, I’m excited for Christmas to come and anxious for November to be over so we can get to the “good stuff”.  But this year, I wouldn’t mind a few extra days, just to catch up!  There never seems to be quite enough time to finish everything that I would like to get done.

And yes, the blog does suffer.  Perhaps it’s good that I didn’t do NaBloPoMo this year!

But I do have some things to bring to your attention.  First off, I have a couple of new reviews up over on my review blog.  I took part in a blog tour (yes, really!) for a wonderful, festive and romantic novel, “Lakeshore Christmas” by Susan Wiggs.  I suggest all book and Christmas fans go read the review and then go buy the book because I had such a good time reading that one.  You know it had to be good if I’ve actually READ a book these days!

I also have reviewed, yet again, the custom holiday cards over at Minted.com.  I was lucky enough to get to review them last year and to get to do it again this year?  Just awesome.  Rest assured, Minted will be the first place I look should I need custom cards in the future.  And their holiday card designs this year?  Awesome.  Definitely go check it out.

I know you hear about my knitting all the time and how busy it keeps me (REALLY REALLY BUSY).  Do you want to keep up with how it’s going on Facebook?  I have a page for that!  Become a fan and make my day.  Please?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my knitting.  I swear, I’m such a slavedriver!

Why is it that when you’ve sucked it up, vowed to make the best of things and just want to go with the flow, does life then throw yet MORE curveballs at you just to see if you’re REALLY up to the challenge (hint: I’m not)?  Are the fates truly that cruel?  (Answer: YES.)  Of course, any complaint I have here is painfully minor and I am well, well aware of that.  But they are complaints.  And if a blog isn’t for complaining once (or twice) (or more) in a while, then I don’t know what it’s for.

Item #1: Remember that whole thing where the tan van has been parked for the month because it’s not registered and Kile’s white van that, while older and rattles as you drive around in it, is legal so it has been our vehicle?  Yeah.  Well, yesterday the tread split from the tire (the tire that was causing the rattling and that we were HOPING and PRAYING would just last through the month and we would replace it next month) and now it is UNDRIVEABLE.  Oh ho ho… I couldn’t make this stuff up.  And of COURSE Kile doesn’t have a spare to put on because it too is busted or somesuch nonsense and I’m not entirely sure WHY or WHAT.  But long story short: Kile had to take the tan van today.  We are hoping that he doesn’t get pulled over for driving with expired tags but that would be just like The Fates to arrange that so I’m not holding my breath.

I think the long term plan here is for Kile to see if the spare from the tan van will fit the white van or some such.  I’m not entirely sure and I don’t know if I really want to know anyhow (ignorance can be bliss).  But, OMG, doesn’t it just FIGURE?

Item #2: Liam’s high chair, apparently, has been RECALLED.  What makes me laugh is that the very reason it is being recalled is something that has happened to us (in fact, it happened several months ago) but because we are lame, negligent cheapskates, we have continued to use the chair anyhow.  According to the site, we shouldn’t be doing that.  OOPS.  But I’d like to know how else we are supposed to feed the Tiny Wonder since we have no booster or anything else and this child needs to be RESTRAINED in order to eat.  The more straps, the better.  If he can’t escape, he has no choice but to eat.  (It’s called the Imprisonment Method, look it up.)  So we gotta contact Evenflo and get a repair kit or somesuch goofiness.  Blah blah blah.

In the meantime, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when Kile told me about this this morning.  Of COURSE our highchair is being recalled.  What the heck took them so long??  And also: JUST OUR LUCK.  (Hint to big PR companies: Now would be a great time to send me a high chair to test out for review purposes.  Just sayin’.)

Do I need more items than that?  I really don’t think I do, but I know if I thought about it hard enough, I think I could.  Or, you know, I could just wait ten minutes for the roof to cave in, the power to go out, the DSL to give up or something.  And again?  WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED.

Warning!  If you are a brother or sister to me (via blood or marriage), I advise you to skip this post.  Unless you really want to have your Christmas gift spoiled.  Turn away now and save the surprise for Christmas morning!

There.  Now that that’s out of the bag, I wanted to share with you the contents of the gift bags we put together for our siblings and their families this holiday season.  Partially so I have a record of the awesomeness we put together this year (direct quote from Harry: “We’ve worked harder on Christmas this year than we ever have before!”), and partially so that if there are any of you who are looking for ideas for homemade, handmade and inexpensive gifts, then maybe this would be an interested read for you.  Anyhow, sorry for the lack of pictures but I was uber-lame and didn’t take pictures of anything before we got it all bagged and boxed up.  Whoops. I’ll try to find links where I can though to make up for it, deal?

• The first thing is the picture of the three kids in wallet size.  We then matted that on some fancy red and white paper and then put it in a wooden frame that we painted white and decorated with little Christmas baubles.  I also painted wooden “phrases” (such as Believe, Hope, Joy, Noel…etc) and those were glued to the top of the frame.
• Chocolate molded Christmas tree pretzel rods and chocolate molded Santa Claus’ on a candy cane.  Wrapped up in little candy bags and tied with a bow.
• Plastic bin filled with homemade peanut brittle
• Plastic bin filled with homemade fudge
• Various and sundry handmade ornaments, mostly made by Harry.
• A Christmas Mix CD compiled by yours truly.  It features some seriously awesome Christmas songs.
• In the bags that are going to houses where there are little kids, we’ve included the appropriate number of craft kits.  One bag includes a ‘Snowman Making Kit‘ and another includes a couple of flower fairies that I made at a craft day event.
• Most of the bags include a book or two.  I got a lot of free books this year, some I barely cracked the spine on.  I sent these on to homes I felt were appropriate for them.
• A fancy-schmancy Christmas card, including our fabulous holiday letter.
• Each of these items were packed into a new reuseable shopping bag from our local Whole Foods store.  As a bonus, Whole Foods had a special holiday edition of their shopping bag so we got those.

The whole thing was then wrapped up in cellophane and tied closed with a golden ribbon.  Voila!  So what do you think?  Will these make nice presents?  Will the recipients appreciate the effort?  A lot of work though it was, it was kind of fun putting these together.  Maybe we’ll do it again next year.  Maybe we won’t.  We’ll see how these go over first!

I seem to have established a routine of doing these at night.  I’ve been finding it’s a nice way to wind down after a long day.

1. Rockstar Energy Drink.  I would stock a whole second refrigerator with this stuff if I could.
2. My new knitting project (a baby hat).  I’m impressing myself with all my straight stitches and minimal slipups (BTW, my Ravelry invite came through so look me up if you belong!  marilynsp!)
3. Watching my oldest play Wii and have such a good time with it.  Makes the darned thing so worth it. (Also BTW, check out my review of Harry’s latest favorite game.  It is WAY fun.)
4. That it is December.  I love this month (usually) (mostly).  Now, if only it would SNOW.
5. Having our outdoor Christmas lights on and working again (not that they were ever taken down from last year!).  Makes me feel so much more festive!

I got to see “Twilight” last night!  No thanks to my loving husband.  My dear mother in law offered to go see it with me.  And it was so exciting to get to go see it on the opening day.  I didn’t even know what to expect, actually.  I was almost afraid to get my hopes up too much.  I know how hard it is to fullfill fan expectations in book-to-movie situations such as this.  I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much.  But I also didn’t want to be stubborn and dampen any thrill of actually seeing the movie either.  So I felt oddly keyed up, sitting in the theater, waiting for the movie to begin. 

There was a good crowd there, a lot of pre-teen girls, quite a few 30-something women.  But there were men too.  Most likely dragged by their significant others.  But they didn’t have a long-suffering look to them, so one can only figure that they weren’t entirely opposed to seeing it (unlike some people I know).  everyone was feeling rather festive.  There were a lot of smiles.  The line waiting to go into the theater was long, but orderly and the crowd wasn’t actually that obnoxious.  I was pretty pleased.  

The Harry Potter trailer?  Awesome.  Of course.  I’m still annoyed that it’s been moved to July, but it looks as though it will be worth the wait.  And hey, at least now we can go see it in the drive-in.  Bonus!

Okay, so here’s what I thought of the movie.  I’m going to put it behind a “more” tag, so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know, don’t click through.  Mmkay?