Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

SHE'S BA-ACK.

christmas stacey is back.

this is the time of year that i start my book of lists. christmas (which begins the monday before thanksgiving and ends somewhere around jan 5 – for me) is my favorite time of year. i’m gonna be pretty much insufferable for the next couple of months – fair warning.

anyway – my list book. i used the same standard-sized notebook for many years. the last couple of years, i’ve switched over to a smaller notebook – one that i can carry with me.

my first list is the names of people outside our immediate group of 6 to whom we will be giving presents. relatives, friends, co-workers, etc. bill and i decided a couple years ago that we would give “home-made” gifts only to this group of people. the gift can be as simple as a tin of our home-made cashew brittle, or as elaborate and time consuming as the heated footstools we made for my sisters last year.

my second list is a list of gift ideas for list one.

third list: immediate family members. each person warrants their own page as the page will be filled with gift ideas. this list gets added to and honed down over the weeks preceeding the final shopping trips or catalog ordering frenzy.

list four. the hated “must get done in the house” list. this year, i’m determined not to bite off more than i can chew (last year was brutal). we need to finish our dining room cupboard (we call it “bob”), get the glass for the doors, rework the drawers, final painting. i’m going to order new slipcovers for the living room couches, get new couch pillows, decorate a lampshade, sew a new cushion cover for a chair, and other little stuff. jax will need help finishing his room redo he started: finish painting, replace a couple of floor tiles, new rug and bedding. i’d like to get a nice futon for what used to be called matt and mark’s room. it’s still pretty much their room. i’m ordering a slipcover for the chair in there, too. other “small” jobs (I SWEAR TO GOD THEY’RE SMALL, BILL).

list five: menus and food ideas.

there are other lists: guest lists for the several dinners we host (we usually have a “sister’s christmas” party for us and my sisters and their significant others, a “quiet” christmas eve with our family and our best friend’s family, there are usually a couple more “events”). craft ideas. recipes. anything else i can think of goes in this book.

it’s probably pretty clear here – the holidays are kind of a big “norman rockwell goes to hollywood” kind of production for me. i LOVE it. when bill and i first married, he was kind of weirded out by my holiday craziness. he was a low-key holidays kind of guy. we’ve tempered each other, i think. i’m more likely to “plan” for the quiet, low-key moments though. he’s now really into the preparation and enjoyment of the “events.”

he gave me a wonderful early christmas gift a couple weeks ago. he THANKED me for making holidays so cool in our home and imparting that love of all things “holiday” to him. whoa.

Posted by Stacey at October 27, 2003 09:35 AM