Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve dinner, lasagna, Italian sausage, corn and Strawberry Cream Cheese Jello. YUM!

I think Shauna is enjoying the lasagna!

The youngest eating dinner, ignore the background mess, that was the temporary wrapping station!

Luke, trying to ignore me and Jack and Mike not even noticing me because they are so interested in the food! We were missing Steven, who is in jail today and Drew, who had to work, but we still had a nice family dinner.

Alex's artful arrangement of the fudge I made. There is chocolate, cookies and cream, butterscotch, peanut butter and peppermint fudge.

This has been a really nice Christmas so far. It hasn't been nearly as stressful and upsetting as the last 7 years or so have been. I'm not saying everything has been perfect, but about as close as we get to perfect around here!

The kids all pitched in and helped today, which was awesome! First I got up to a family room and kitchen that had been cleaned up by Hannah and Alex. Alex was doing dishes while Hannah finished wiping the counters. I was amazed and thrilled! Hannah tired pretty quickly (more on that later) and Alex went on to wash the entire cook top (still broken, but dirty anyway) and wash all of the cabinets! Luke washed a big load of dishes a bit later in the day, after I dirtied everything up again.

Since I had a nice clean kitchen, I was able to get right to the cooking this morning. While I was doing that, Hannah came up and gave me a big hug and put her head down on my chest. I said, "Are you cold? The only time you ever hug me like this is when you are cold!" She answered, "You're my soft pillow. My pillow that talks." I KNEW she was using me somehow, I just had the use wrong. Oh well, I'm still pretty smart, for a talking pillow!!!

Santa's DNA

This is the first Christmas that all the kids know that Santa doesn't bring the gifts. We will still have "Santa" gifts on Christmas morning, though. As always, I had someone, this year it was Mike, take the kids to the park or out somewhere, while I wrap all of the Santa gifts. I got everything wrapped while they were out, except for several clothes boxes. I figured they could come home while I was still wrapping those, since they couldn't tell what was inside.

So....I was wrapping and marking the packages with Santa's handwriting. Shauna saw me and said, "Ah-ha, now I have Santa's DNA!". It was sort of a "had to be there" moment, but funny. She meant that she had seen me writing in the fancy Santa writing and now knew for sure that there is no Santa.

Pizza cutter substitute

As I predicted would happen, Mike was not happy that Steven bought me the pizza cutter since he had planned to get that for me for Christmas. Being the good wife that I am, I figured I should tell my husband some other ideas. Since I haven't spoken, in person, with my husband since I mumbled "I love you" and "Have a good week" at 4:00 am Monday morning, as he headed out to the airport and I headed back to sleep, I figured that since he usually reads my blog, I should tell him here.

I want a large square of either granite or marble. I don't care what it looks like, but it should be at least 18" x 18", but not too wide to fit on the counter. I would also like a marble rolling pin, but that is not as important and I would prefer to wait for that, rather then spend too much on me at once! I saw a piece of marble at that kitchen store I love, for $14.99 but it was a little to small to roll out a large pizza crust. I'm thinking you can probably get a left over piece at a counter top store. Maybe even at Home Depot or Lowes.

North Vs. South

Christmas decorating in the North usually involves a parka, ski gloves, a scarf and sometimes even a shovel and bag of rock salt. Christmas decorating in the South involves being a little patient and waiting for just the right day because you know that sometime between Thanksgiving and mid-December, it is going to be in the 70's! Now if I only could get these Southerners to put up colored lights (and lots of them!), I would be all set!

I know that the single candles in the window are very pretty and they are an invitation to the Christ child to come into your home. We had them in our windows when I was a kid, too, but we had colored lights surrounding them (in the shapes of Christmas trees, no less, thanks to my dad!) and we had colored lights lining the roof of the house. Here, many people just have the candles and maybe a wreath or two or maybe even a string of white lights on the house. Ugh!

I know, any Southerner who reads this will probably think my idea of Christmas decorating is gaudy and theirs is sophisticated. I agree, but I LIKE gaudy for Christmas! And what kid doesn't love to go see those crazy houses with tons of lighted, moving figures everywhere??? When I was kid, we went every year to a house that was a couple of blocks away from my grandparent's house in Palos Heights (Palos Gardens subdivision to be exact) that, rumor had it, a doctor owned. They always had one of those over-the-top Christmas displays. The kind of would never have at my own house, but love to see. That is one of my favorite childhood Christmas memories. I can still see the whole display in my mind.

Because money is tight, we may be cutting down on our lights this year. I'm not saying that for sure because if I get too many protests from the younger kids, I won't do it. Instead of putting the colored icicle lights on the lower and upper porches, I'm thinking of putting them only on the lower porch and only lighting them for a few hours a night. I will still put up the big wreath on the garage, that has tons of lights on it. Or more specifically, Mike and CUP will put up the big wreath.

Cream Cheese Pastry Results

I blogged about using margarine this year instead of butter in my cookie baking. I tried making a batch of Grammy's pastries with margarine, even though the recipe warns "do not substitute margarine for the butter". I'm not often a rule breaker, but in the name of being frugal, I'm willing to step over the line, as long as it's legal!

Well, here is what happened. The margarine pastry was way easier to roll out and form into cookies, way easier. The cookies looked the same, smelled the same, but didn't taste the same. They were really lacking in flavor. CUP came downstairs and I offered him some, not mentioning the experiment I was doing. He ate a couple and said, "Did you do something different with these, they don't taste as good at all." I guess I have my answer, I'm going to have to splurge on butter!

Christmas Cookies

I started making Christmas cookies today. I made two batches of sugar cookies and two batches of vanilla refrigerator cookies today. I froze the dough so we could have fresh cookies when we are ready to make them. I've frozen cooked cookies before, but they don't taste quite the same.

In my ongoing effort to save money , I'm using margarine instead of butter this year. I prefer butter in baking, but since butter is $2.50 a pound and margarine is only .73 a pound, my choice has sort of been made for me! I even had several .50 off coupons for Blue Bonnet which helped even more. I was also able to get 4 pounds of sugar for .99 and 5 pounds of flour for .99. I'm going to be sending Mike and a few boys to the store for more before the sale ends, since only one per person is allowed. At those prices, each batch of cookies actually cost less than $1!

I love being able to pop some frozen dough out of the freezer and just bake it. It is so much less messy than pulling out all the individual ingredients. I'm working towards a stress-free Christmas this year, as I haven't had one of those since Jack and Drew were little!