Holidays Are A-Comin'!

So we're already finished with the second week of November - how in the world did that happen? Start your Christmas shopping yet? I did, but anyone who knows me knows that my loathing of crowds is legendary, so it was really an act of self-preservation, especially since the lion's share of my holiday shopping is for children under the age of 10.

Since we're extremely financially savvy right now (like the way that sounds, right?), any grown-up gifts will probably be home made. Make with the fuzzy scarves! You can get some fun eyelash yarn from Lion Brand for about $5 a skein; knit that with a strand of regular worsted wool (less than $2.50 for a good skein, and one skein makes the equivalent of two scarves) and you've got some fun Christmas gifts. Get yourself down to Pearl River or hit their site at http://www.pearlriver.com and get some cute Chinese take-out boxes, and you've got some fun packaging to add to the mix.

Basically, for the parents this year, I'm doing framed holiday photos of the kids. I can get nice frames from Target or Marshall's for no more than $10 each. For someone more computer-savvy, burn CDs with either some great music (the new milennium's version of the 'mix tape') or put a slide show of photos on it. I'm still working on the ones I promised my fellow bridesmaids - and the bride - from Stacey's wedding (blush).

Wow, it's 10 a.m. already. I've only had one cup of coffee - need to put on some more water. I'm definitely sticking with the individual coffee bags after the unfortunate penicillin incident from yesterday. Coffee should never come out of the pot in clumps, I don't care how old it is. I wouldn't be surprised if Gevalia showed up at my door to take my coffee carafe back after that one.

Continuing to get the boys' room together, which is getting easier now that we've gotten the bunk beds up and some storage solutions firmly in place. I may even have my living room back by Christmas. Man, do we all own a lot of books. I think I need to explore getting some shelves up on the wall. When we lived in our first apartment together in Woodside, Mike created this whole shelving situation around the living room, we had this great runner of books around us all the time. May be fun if we can do it here.

Thanksgiving - my aunt wants us in Staten Island as usual. I think I'm getting tired of it. My mom wants to know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing on a daily basis, I have to think ahead to Thanksgiving? I really liked when we hosted it at our place. It was a little cramped but nice having our family come here, and best of all, we didn't have to contend with parking.