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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Getting Ready for Christmas...



After a number of weeks of fairly concentrated illustrating (during and after which I discover that I have used up my allotment of 'decision-making-brain-cells', and can no longer make any decisions of a creative nature... What color to use here?? I don't know. What color *is* pink anyway?) and making my initial deadlines, I decided to take a day or so off to clean, catch-up and do some Christmas prep. That day has turned into a week, but gratefully I can say, I am about done with the holiday part (although there is much left to finish illustratively).

So, over the last week we've:

de-ratted the decor and put all in plastic bins, as well as thoroughly clean the shed.
Put up the tree and decorated generally.
Correlated the aquired gifts to see what still needed to be got.
Finished up shopping.
Made teacher/friend gifts to pass out at school.
Wrapped all said gifts, and shipped what needed to go.
Made this year's Christmas mailer.
Mailed out to all business addresses.
Got the annual family Christmas letter written and printed.
Attended a couple more Christmas concerts that the kids were in.
Picked up visiting brother from the airport.

Now, all that is left is mailing out the family Christmas cards and delivering a few neighborhood gifts... *deep breath* I actually made it back into the studio last night (first time in a week). I have a couple of revisions on my book covers to do, and then it's just plowing through the actual paintings (as well as prepping for my January class. I wonder when *that* is going to happen...?)



This is what we made for teacher/friend gifts this year. Clusters of 'marshmallow pops': marshmallows skewered on the end of peppermint sticks, dipped in very dark chocolate and then sprinkled with... sprinkles. Pretty yummy actually. A very good hot chocolate companion.



Justin wrapped Jack's Christmas present (this giant tennis-'chew'-ball) which Jack immediately found and opened. These critters - no respect for dates! He saw no reason to wait until Christmas morning since he *knew* it was his! Justin retrieved it from him, rewrapped it and has sort of hidden it now. I'll be interested to see if Jack finds it again before Sunday.

2 comments:

Gretel said...

What a splendid tree!

If you find out what pink is, let me know, I think I've *forgotten* too...

Card winging it's way across the ocean, but may be a little late!

Anonymous said...

You have been busy with Christmas. Love the candycane idea. I made homemade dog biscuits this year for the dogs in our life. It was fun! They look so good and Lily would jump through hoops for them! The liver powder and bacon grease I guess! If there are any left next month, I'll bring some for Jack. :)