Christmas Time is Near

Hi Everyone!  I hope all of you are ready for Santa Claus.  I'm just about ready to go, the presents still need to be wrapped and I have some baking to do but the good thing is that I am on VACATION!!!!  OMGosh, 2 WHOLE WEEKS OFF from the madness of my job (which I dearly love but am completely burned out.  I am crispy).

What do you think I'll be doing with my time?  Well, I have some household things that need attending to desperately and of course there's the baking and present wrapping.  I have a list that could wrap around the earth a few times.  If I get a 10th of it done, I'll be a happy camper. 

First of all there's the general housecleaning, not too big of a job and it's necessary.  I want to clean out a few closets and I really want to organize my craft room.  It's claustrophobic because I have stuff literally hanging from the ceiling.  It needs a good clean and scrub.  I want to go through some old magazines, put things away and generally make it a nice place to work again.  When I let it go, it becomes a catch-all room and all the creativity gets lost.  I don't want to be there and work. 

The other big job is the basement dungeon.   The TV show, Hoarders, would have a field day down there.  You take a chance with your life to go down there, you may never return to the light of day!  We have things that we trucked from our old house that we lived in for 11 years (we've been in this house for 21 years) so I have stuff from 30 years ago that hasn't seen the light of day and I figure if we haven't opened those boxes by now, it's a safe bet that we won't miss the stuff when it's gone.  There's construction stuff from when the house was built, craft goodies, holiday decorations, Mike's things and the flotsam and jetsam of 21 years of living here. Well, you get the idea.  It's time to purge.  I want the house to vomit it out to the landfill.  A clean slate for 2011 and I hope to break that law of nature that says Nature abhors a vacuum and avoid filling it back up.  Wish me luck!

But I really want to finish some cross stitch things this week.  I spent most of my time painting snowmen this weekend and had absolutely NO needle time in over a week.  I have a few ornaments that need to be put together and a pillow I want to finish.  And I want to stitch.  And stitch some more.

Next week, Mike and Jenna will be here!!! I am so looking forward to seeing them!  They will be home for a few days.  Mike will be leaving for Florida mid-January for additional training, Jenna will be with her parents while he is there and they will leave for Japan in mid-February.  I am glad because originally they were to leave for Japan on January 6th.  Now Jenna will get a chance to say a proper good-bye to her parents and friends.  They won't feel like they are getting ripped out of their lives here and dropped into Okinawa.  They now get to ease into Japan. 

I promised you my list of Wips that I pledge to bust in 2011 during the Flipin' Crazy January Challenge.  So here it is...in no particular order:

• Alphabets - Merrily Beams
• Snow Day - With Thy Needle and Thread
• Christmas Double Flips - Lizzie*Kate
• Her Sampler - Carriagehouse Samplings
• Sweeping Snowflakes - With Thy Needle and Thread
• Friendship Sampler - BOAF
• Eye on the Sparrow - Silver Creek Samplers
• Quaker Medallion Sampler - SANQ Winter 2000
• Ellen Birdseye - The Good Huswife
• Remember Me - Mary Garry
•  Thankful Wheeler - The Good Huswife
• Time and Season Sampler - Moira Blackburn
• Maria Chivers - Samplers Remembered
• This is the Day - Hands to Work
• True Virtue Sampler (Janie Applebaum) JCS magazine

That's the list...I hope to finish them this coming year.  I always start a new goodie on January 1st but I haven't made up my mind if I want to do that or pick up one of these that I haven't touched in months or years.  If I do that, it'll "feel" like a new start and not add to this growing and growing list.

I also joined the Crazy January 2011 Challenge to stitch Christmas ornaments and I joined the All Year Long Christmas Stitch-a-long just to stitch Christmas things.  That SAL is really no pressure and I'll post the ornaments I finish there.  I wish someone would start an All Year Long Halloween Stitch-a-long.  Now that would be sweet!

The DH is in Texas to attend Mike's graduation from Mil Intel School and to help the kids drive their cars back to NY.  He won't be back until late Christmas Eve.  The camera is with him and I won't be able to post pics until he gets home.  So be patient.  I know I promised a give-away but unless you want it to be a TOTAL surprise you'll have to wait until next week for that post with pictures. 

Anyway...sorry for the long post and thanks so much for visiting my corner of the world!  I love it when you come by!  I'll post something later in the week....for Christmas...