Christmas Decorating

Hi! I'm Laney and I ❤️ Christmas! The decorations, the music, the activities with my family. There is nothing better in my mind.

So how early do you start decorating for Christmas? Do you wait until after Thanksgiving or do you start beforehand because you decorate every room in the house, front and backyards?

As kids, we didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving. We ate dinner at our dad's restaurant together and we would decorate on Black Friday before we knew what Black Friday was.

Now that we're older and a lot has changed, we have a large Thanksgiving dinner with together. We have some family visit from Boston. We do dinner, plan our shopping and head out about 8pm Thanksgiving night. Typically we're out all night, come home to regroup about 3am, grab a bite to eat and either hit a new set of stores or make a plan for later in the morning.

After all the shopping is done we hit our respective homes to decorate.

This year, before Thanksgiving, my sister made a couple of wreaths and sent me a text with them. Got me thinking "why have I never done this before?". I have an entire room in my house set up for crafts and sewing yet I've never made my own wreath.

I promptly hit the store to buy what I needed to make wreaths for the inside of my doors since I already have them for outside. I also bought a 'believe' sign from A.C. Moore that I wanted to paint. My daughter and I put up the tree, the garland and all the other decorations. Then I got to making the wreaths and realized I have two hurricanes in the living room that I normally tie ribbon around with an ornament hanging. 😀

This year I decided to change the ribbon on the hurricanes because what I normally used covered me in gold glitter. It was everywhere!! I measured the ribbon, sewed snaps on the back so next year all I need to do is snap it back on - so easy!!

Check out my finished projects...

❤️ them all, especially the red bow on the wreath.

Share your projects in the comments. I'd love 💕 to see your creations.

It's mid-November. I don't say that as if it's not known but more in a OMG!! IT'S MID-NOVEMBER!! kind of way. Where did the year go? Feels like yesterday I was getting ready for my daughter's high school graduation in June and now we're almost knee deep in the holidays with turkeys, decorating, caroling (do people still do that?) and hot chocolate.

With the rush of the next couple of months I wanted to lighted the mood a bit and share something I learned today, the origin of the phrase "Black Friday". Many, like me, have always believed it was related to the one time of year retailers made a profit. Turns out it was Philly traffic-cops in the late 1950's that coined this term to describe the terrible traffic conditions in Center City the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Reporters at the time picked up on the story in early 1960's and did what they do best, made it big news. Retailers did not like this term and tried without success to have the day after Thanksgiving called "Big Friday!". So thank you to the Philly cops of the 1950's and the reporters of the 1960's for unknowingly naming one of the biggest shopping days of the year. "Black Friday" as we know it today, more for the financial being in the black, began in the 1980's however it was still mostly a "Philly thing".

Here's to all the retail associates that work on one of the most shopped days of the year, my thoughts are with you while I join the masses to shop. :)

Hope everyone has a wonderful, safe holiday season!!

Holiday stress with a moody teenager...

It's just me and my daughter at home (she's 16, three months shy of 17), you would think the house would stay clean or at the very least neat. Sometimes I just want to walk around with a giant vacuum and suck everything up so it's just gone.

Until last night my kitchen was the only clean part of my house, the living room is a mess and only made worse by my daughter  and her friend working on a physics project. Somewhere along the lines on Tuesday night they ate and left the dishes on a small table in there. I didn't notice because I had not stepped foot in the living room really since Monday. Yesterday all she had to do was clean up her mess including the water bottles (one shoved under the couch and another on top of the couch). Her laptop was tossed on one of the couches which drives me NUTS! That's no way to treat an expensive piece of equipment. 

She was told to do the dishes (left in the sink since Tuesday, today is now Thursday) last night. Her response, "I'll do them when I do them", oh boy did that cause a fight! Who did she think she was talking to me, her mother, like that?? I was so floored I told her she better come right home from school, "I'm not coming right home I'm staying after to work on my project so I don't screw up my junior year like you always tell me". Let's just say at this point I was ready to toss her out in the cold, I was not going to listen to this nor deal with the attitude. We both went to bed angry and I woke up that way this morning. All things piled up and now completely stressed, aggravated and done being the maid, alarm clock and personal bank. I wish as kids the one lesson they would learn (and wish I knew when I was a kid), just do what your told or asked right away, it saves a ton of grief in the long run.

All my rambling has a point...this time of year while normally the most wonderful time of year is also very stressful for all of us, kids included. They feed off their parents moods and often wind up being in a worse one than us. She had three projects due this week, her last week in school before Winter Break...that in itself is pure stress. I get it.

I'm stressed not because of work, the last two weeks before Christmas normally slow down for me, but because I'm trying to bake cookies for everyone (70 dozen or so), make sure I have the perfect Christmas presents for everyone in my family and of course keeping the house clean. Nothing worse than a messy house with a beautiful Christmas tree front and center. 

Step back, take a breath and remember this too shall pass.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all!

Life goes on...

It seems I'm back here in the same spot I was in last year questioning where to go and what to do. I promise myself I'd write more, go out more with friends just do more for me. As life gets busier and busier it seems I do less and less for me and just barely enough to keep my head above water. Life is busy, crazy and hectic this time of year. Not enough hours in the day, always tired...

Another draft but this one from earlier this month, seems like not much has changed in theme from one year to the next. Maybe it's time I start exploring what makes me happy in relation to my career. I recently watched a Christmas movie that was about the 2,000th take on Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol", this was a Hallmark movie called "It's Christmas, Carol". Great take on the classic actually, my point is, the one line that stuck with me the most is Work to Live, Don't Live to Work. I should enjoy what I'm doing not just going through the motions to make sure my bills are paid. Why can't I love what I do and pay my bills? I think that might be the question of the century and one I'll explore if the world doesn't end on Friday as the Mayan's seem to think it will.