Really, Really Cheap!

This is an extremely difficult and dangerous time for me. It is near impossible for me to pass up a fabulous sale, and they are absolutely everywhere! I ran in Target only to find all holiday merchandise marked down 90%. I had to breathe in a brown paper bag. I really don't need anything, even if it's just nine cents. I have a lifetime supply of wrapping paper after running the school wrapping paper fundraiser for two years. I have ten trees worth of ornaments and only a tiny portion of my Christmas decorations see the light of day. I have vowed to purge the house of all of the extra stuff and I cannot be adding to it with great deals. Wish me luck during this difficult time.

Happy Bonus Christmas!

Deke was very good this year so Santa brought him all of these!!!

Lulu was also on the nice list!!!

This is one of the gifts I gave my husband.
I found two of these very cool aluminum piano stools.

December 26th is Bonus Christmas Day at the Crispell home. We started doing this years ago as a way to help with the feeling of let down when the holiday is finally over. There is so much anticipation and preparation leading up to Christmas, and when it's over you are left with a weird feeling of loss. The best gift on Bonus Christmas is a gift that you find marked down to practically nothing in all of the day after sales! Target has great holiday gift sets on sale today and I will have to scoop a couple up. Hope you had a wonderful holiday and an even nicer Bonus Christmas!!!

Enjoy!

We are expecting 4-6 more inches of snow today, this has been a very snowy December! It is very tempting to move to the equator. I have to shop for our Christmas Eve dinner and our Christmas morning breakfast. We always have Italian food on Christmas Eve and egg nog french toast on Christmas morning.
I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday!!!
Your Pal,
Linda

A Corleone Christmas

I have a rather odd Christmas tradition of watching The Godfather 1 and 2 on Christmas Eve night. I stay up until the wee hours of Christmas morning helping Santa get the house ready for the kids, as we watch these two wonderful movies. Santa tends to leave his snowy white shoe prints all over the living room floor just as I am turning off the DVD. Nothing puts me in the holiday spirit more than hearing the line, "leave the gun, take the cannoli"!

Misgivings (Missed Giving)

Do you lose gifts that you have squirreled away for the holidays? When I find a gift during the year I store it in my "prize closet" and retrieve it for the holidays. Unfortunately, I always seem to lose something in the closet. I am currently tearing the house up looking for a sock monkey, a gold Richard Nixon pin covered in faux pearls and a signed book. I only have five days to find them, yikes!!!!

Do The Math

This weekend I made sugar cookies and I had to quadruple the recipe, yikes! I got a headache from all the crazy math skills I had to whip out. I could have asked my 10 year old to help, he could do it in a fraction of the time (pun), but that would be pathetic of me. I always hold my breath while the first batch is baking. If my little reindeer start growing 20 times their original size, I know my arithmetic was a little off. Are you baking for the Holidays???

Flea Market Holiday

Estate sale find!

I love finding wreaths and ornaments that were made by Grandma
using tons of pins, pearls and sequins!

Plenty of broken bird ornaments to fill 1000 nests.

I collect these bowls made from greeting cards, they are the perfect container
to give cookies in.

Poor Santa has seen better days, he's chipping and crumbling.

He's Really Creepy

We have a Christmas tradition of going to Marshall Field's (now Macy's) on State Street to see their holiday windows and have lunch under the big tree in the Walnut Room. When the kids were younger we always saw Santa at Marshall Field's because this is where the real Santa is known to hangout. I will never forget Lulu's first visit to Santa, she was beyond creeped out by the big guy. When she finally felt comfortable enough to go near him, she shoved her wet little hand into his beard and began twisting the acrylic fibers. Lulu's little fingers had the same magical effect as twisting a fork covered with gum and peanut butter into Santa's itchy beard. She had wound her hand in so tight that her fingers were turning blue. It ends up that the real Santa must not have been available that particular day, because this impostor Santa was not even a little amused.

Boxwood Balls

I plan on making a dozen of these boxwood balls to hang over our dining room table. I think they will look lovely hanging at varying lengths. My only concern is that boxwood tends to smell like a bus load of teenagers returning from camp.

The Parade

Because of my husband's job running "Super Great Doll Place", we get to ride in the Festival Of Lights Parade every year. Mickey Mouse rides on the first float and waves a magic wand to light the trees on Michigan Avenue. The big parade was yesterday, and we had the pleasure of riding with brand new Disney characters Bolt and Mittens. This beautiful spectacle is capped off with a fireworks display over the Chicago River. It is quite extraordinary to see the reflections of the fireworks in the high rise windows. It is pretty darn cool.