Another Christmas has past and a New year's on the way!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  I know I haven't had time to do much on here other than a recipe, but I thought about it......does that count?  Our Christmas was great.  First of all I got to have an old fashioned Christmas with my parents, my younger brother and my sister.  Just us.  We had a blast just talking and...well eating way too much.   My sister and I got to share a guest room and we stayed up til nearly 3 in the morning talking.  Apparently loud enough for my Dad to say "Don't make me come in there(Smile).  We exchanged small gifts with our parents and with each other with one exception,  My wonderful sister blessed me with.......A SERGER!!!!  That was a surprise.  Now I have no excuse for not sewing.  The family get together was the next day filled with more "less than stellar"food choices and a White Elephant type game for gifts.  Carols were sung, my Dad, not realizing it wasn't a Santa hat, sported a goofy looking elf type hat.  His first clue to it  not being a Santa Hat should have been everybody taking out their camera for a shot.  Well except me cause I was sitting next to him so didn't realize it until later.  Guess it should have been my first clue too huh?  Our own family Christmas was full of all the traditions we have held each year; Pj's on Christmas Eve, Watching "A Christmas Story" and now "A Christmas Carol".  Plenty of bad food choices there as well.  Our Christmas day was a laid back affair with just us. We opened presents, had a breakfast of Gorilla Bread, Egg custard pie, Sausage cheese balls, Sausage croissants, OJ, Coffee, and Hot Chocolate.  We snacked on that through out the day,  By Friday morning we were like Ughh, I will just have a yogurt please////and water.....just water.   Yea.  Seriously.  We are ready to get back on a healthier heating routine.


So as of today my Christmas Decor is neatly (ummm  yea) packed away.  I don't like looking at decorations past Christmas Day because it makes me sad.  Plus I put my decorations up Thanksgiving week so by Christmas I am ready to pack them up and move on.  I am proud of the fact that I managed to consolidate my decorations into many fewer boxes by getting rid of the packaging of some of the decorations.  They are all wrapped and packed away to avoid any breaking.  Plus I invested a few dollars and bought 3 ornament storage containers.  I only needed to use 2 for ornaments, lights, etc.  The last one I discovered was perfect for storing gift wrap stuff.  So now all my gift wrapping paraphernalia is in one neatly arranged container and in my closet.  While putting decorations away, we had to find new placement for some gorilla shelves and a desk from Rubic's room.  He had received some new black shelves for Christmas and no longer needed those things.  Low and behold the desk fit perfectly next to my sewing desk.  This allowed me to take my serger out and leave it up for any time I sew.

Now putting all the stuff away and putting the normally used home decor out only took about 8 hours.  DH helped putting stuff away and the young men of the family were there for heavy lifting.  So since I had the stuff put away I went out to the garden and harvested what I have of cabbage.  I am sad to say my cabbages did not do as well as I had hoped.  I guess I have about 10 lbs.  Nothing to write home about, but I am going to make sauerkraut none the less.  I am hoping the cooler temps in the house will help make what kraut I make successful.  I have to say a fall garden did not do well so I am planning on just having my spring/summer garden.  There is too much to do in the fall to be worrying over garden plants.  Especially for so little in return.  So as each summer plant is done, I will be putting that area to bed for the fall.  Especially tomatoes.....Especially cherry tomatos!

So that is all for now.  Enjoy some pics of our Christmas !