Holiday Preparations

Our new holiday countdown calendar is completely ready to go. I drew up some shapes (a tree, candy cane, holly, and something else that isn’t coming to mind), wrote a festive activity on each one, laminated them (yes, I have a home laminator–I can’t help it; I’m an elementary school teacher!), and cut them out. Our plan is to start our festivities the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

My goal is to have all of our supplies ready in advance, so we don’t have to waste any time gathering things for our various projects. For one of the activities, we’re going to make baked goods for our colleagues. I got Matt to brainstorm some ideas with me the other night while we cooked dinner. We thought about homemade granola or scones, but in the end we settled on brownies topped with melted chocolate and crumbled Snickers. Don’t tell our colleagues, but they are so easy to make. You simply melt butter and chocolate chips in a sauce pan, pour it over cooled brownies, and sprinkle crumbled brownies on top.

And we’re pretty much good to go with Christmas presents for our families. We’re not doing much homemade stuff at all this year. With a ton of other stuff on my plate, I wanted to keep it simple. I still tried to put a lot of thought into meaningful gifts for people. I can’t reveal too much because I’m not sure who’s lurking around these parts. I can say I am very much looking forward to the holidays!