Happy December

Tweet

I took a bit of a break from here for about a month or so, not intentionally, but because the pace of my life sometimes insists upon it. In the meantime, I survived the Thanksgiving season at work (if you recall, I work as a cook at an upscale grocery store, and make a lot of the entrees and salads sold in the store and through the catering department) and managed to have a low-stress holiday of my own at home. I've been making an effort to not get stressed out during the holidays by trying to do it all, but instead focusing on what is really enjoyed. Rather than trying to get everything cooked and beautiful on Thanksgiving morning, I assigned some food prep tasks to some of the kids during the week and made as much ahead of time as I could (including roasting the turkey the night before). I did do one fairly fiddly and attention-intensive thing on Thanksgiving morning/afternoon, but the kids say it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without it -- the turkey fruit platter. I never design one ahead of time and they're always a little bit different every year, and they take 10 times longer to make than they do to eat, but the appearance of Mr. Fruit Turkey each year seems to mean more to the kids than the turkey itself! The photo above is of the one I made this year. Today I'm doing a little bit of gift shopping and cleaning the family room so we can start putting up our Christmas decorations. I do have a small ceramic tree, a flocked reindeer, and a nutcracker up on the shelf right now, but it will be nice to get the bigger tree and some lights up. I think this weekend we're going to the annual Santa Saturday fundraiser at my son's old preschool so we can have pictures taken with Santa and have the kids do some crafts. Krampus is probably going to leave the kids a prank in their shoes on the 5th (because it amuses me). Next weekend is the German holiday market that I love to visit each year. We'll have a nice dinner and a hot crockpot full of wassail on the Winter Solstice, look at lights and decorate cookies on Christmas Eve, and (hopefully) have a leisurely morning on Christmas Day. I hope you all have a low stress December, however you like to spend it.