Call me crazy but. . .

I am determined to be organized and ahead of the game this Christmas, so much so that I bought this from Amazon last week, and it finally arrived yesterday . . .

The Gooseberry Patch 'All Through The House' Collectors Edition. Over 600 holiday recipes, cheery crafts and easy-t0-make gifts for flurries of fun!

You can call me crazy all you like, but I've had enough of Summer! I can't remember the last time the temperature was below 95 degrees, and apart from the 10 minutes of rain we got yesterday, we haven't had a good downpour since my sister was here at the beginning of June. Christmas planning and looking ahead to cooler weather is helping keep me sane at the minute. I hope you will indulge me and let me share a few pages with you ;-)

I do know someone who will love this book, so I'm showing a picture of the inside cover. especially for S!  You can click on the pictures to see them larger.

Kristen saw this next picture and wants to do a tree like this. I have 3 small trees that sat outside our front door last year with lights on. I can use one of them (it's just 3 ft tall) to recreate this, but I don't think it will have the dog bowl and biscuits around the bottom.

HobbyLobby has the clear glass baubles on sale already. We can add white paint inside of them and the book has the template for the cat and dog cutouts. For the little photo frames (which apparently are leather luggage labels) I think we'll just make our own out of cardstock, and we can put pictures of Boo in them, and if I can get photos of our other friend's dogs we'll add those too. This will be a fun project for Kristen, she just loves anything 'dogs' :-) And of course, now that I've got my sewing machine out, the little fabric bones will be easy to sew up.

Another page I liked was this one. . .


I love oatmeal cookies so I want to try this recipe. What I love about the cannister is that it's actually made from the empty oatmeal cannister. I have two of those sitting in my pantry right now. I can put the oatmeal in a ziploc bag and have a go at making these pretty soon.

And finally, I want to try and recreate this look for my mantle this year. . .

Mainly the green swag. I have one like this but I've never thought to add the baubles and other ornaments to it. I have wooden blocks that spell out 'Merry Christmas' too so I can add those. And I like the thin white candles too (these look like the battery operated ones, not real candles, which is always safer).

Today is also 'Where's Mom' day. This is a new meme I thought I would try to participate in. Every Thursday you are to post a picture of 'you' and one or more of your children. Not sure if this means any picture, or if it has to be a current one taken that week? I may have to cheat a little with this one and sometimes post an oldie! And sometimes it might not even be with Kristen!! I'll keep the Christmas theme going for today though and show you a picture taken this past Christmas. . .

Ahhhh, look at all that lovely cold snow!!!