Christmas Thread--Random
 

I must have set the record for shopping yesterday. We have a huge family and the teachers at my school don't even get out until December 22nd. :(

I do love the Christmas music on the radio! I'm getting real sick of "There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays"--that line "Pennsylvania and some homemade pumpkin pie" won't get out of my head.

I used to love Christmas music too. However, I've had to pick up a part time retail job and now I would be happy to never hear another Christmas song again. My store plays several different versions of about 10 songs total. It doesn't matter if it is a different arrangement by a different artist,it is still the same annoying song being played over and over again.

I remember those days! I would like to hear the music much more if a) the lite music station didn't play it beginning Nov 1st (yes, all Christmas ALL the time -- geez, give Thanksgiving a chance people!) and b) they didn't try to put a rock edge on Away in a Manger like I heard yesterday on my contemporary Christian station :eek:

We have shopped for the kid pretty much all year, so he was taken care of for the most part. I got hubby's stuff done early as well. Now I am forced to either not tell him any hints & get who-knows-what or, tell him exactly what I want & spend yet another Christmas opening every gift knowing exactly what is inside :( Guys - girls are NOT hard to buy for - you just don't want to put the effort into it.

Everything is wrapped but can't go under the tree because of a certain lab puppy who thinks that the tree is her indoor playhouse (yes, she tries to climb THE tree!) The cats have never bothered the tree - none of my cats have actually - but the puppy thinks its fair game. We have the bottom half bare of ornaments now after we found her pulling them off one at a time & hiding them. Beneath our bed (don't ask me how she can still get under there - she is huge!) is like a treasure trove.

Here she is half in/half out of the tree!

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...o/100_3402.jpg

This is the cutest picture!!!!!

I actually love Christmas music. I start playing it before Thanksgiving and until Christmas. My students love the Chipmunks song ("Me I want a hula hoop").

They are learning Feliz Navidad for a show. It's quite humerous because they sing it "Feliz Navada". Then when it comes to the "Prospero ano y Felicidad" they don't sing any of the begining and come in "Felicida". Hey, what can you do, their 1st graders.

So, here's my annual Christmas gift to everyone: recipes.
 

1)THESE ARE AWESOME
Easy Sausage Pinwheels

1 large can pillsbury crescent rolls
1 pkg cream cheese, softened
1 lb sausage, cooked, crumbled

Take crescent roll dough out of pkg, leave whole, and lay on flat surface covered with waxed paper. Pinch all the seams closed and use a rolling pin to flatten and stretch a little. Spread cream cheese over dough and top with sausage. Roll dough, tightly, into a log. Slice in, about, ½” slices. Place rounds on cookie sheet and place in 375F oven for 15 minutes.

2) Easy Sweet and Sour Meatballs

Meatballs:
2 lb hamburger
1 cup crackers, crushed
2 eggs
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/3 cup ketchup
2 tbsp onion

Sauce:
1 can jellied cranberry sauce 12 oz. bottle chili sauce
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice

Mix meatball ingredients and form into balls. Can be frozen until ready to use.
For sauce: mix all ingredients with mixer, cook over medium heat until smooth. Pour over meatballs and bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Or put in crock pot to cook and keep hot for a party.

Those meatball recipes sound awesome Tippiechick. I may have to make them this week.

Those sweet and sour meatballs sound awesome. :)

I haven't done all my gift buying yet. Fortunately we don't have too many people to buy for. So far I have chocolates as a hostess gift for my mom, and... uh, that's it. :o I was also planning on making some cross stitch and needlepoint items as gifts... hasn't happened. In my defense, I've spent the last couple of months interviewing for a new job.

Call me Scrooge, but I cannot stand Christmas music. I don't know how the folks in retail handle the continuous loops of the same old songs. I like the hymns, but songs like "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" make me want to stick toothpicks in my ears. I <3 my iPod.

Merry Christmas... Happy Hanukkah... or as one of my mother's friends likes to say, "Happy Merry." ;)

LOL!! Just before our first Christmas as a married couple, I got that recipe from my MIL with a note telling me that these were *ALWAYS* made on Christmas morning - LOL - they have yet to make an appearance in my life ;)

Thanks, but this one (my little tomboy as I call her) is the cutest picture - she was out playing in the mud:

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...100_3315-1.jpg

I would have used that for our Christmas cards, but hubby says we should at least have the kid in the picture -- so I ordered ones of the kid & Abby (the puppy) with Santa :cool: (AOII Alum & Carnation will be getting them shortly - Xylochick, GP, OTW, and kddani - PM/email me your addy's & I'll send them out ;)

And y'all can thank GP for giving me the power to post pics everywhere :D

I have absolutely no idea what to get my father or brother-in-law. Everyone else is done, but somehow I know Christmas Eve I'll be running around Target frantically trying to find something for each of them. Something that'll they'll never use, of course.

It's the thought that counts, right?

So really wanted to go to San Francisco and get everyone presents from there? Why? I don't have any freakin idea, its not like SF has things we can't find anywhere else, but I just thought it be cool to say "yeah i got that in SF." But the closer I get to leaving back home for the holidays, the less i actually want to go and venture into the city. lol.

That means i'm gonna be stuck shopping at home in the malls with all the late shoppers :(

I need to learn how to use the BART! lol

P.S. my favorite thing to hear for the holidays is the Christmas story by Cheech and Chong

First, love those sausage pinwheels....I make them everytime I have to take a dish for work and everyone loves them....so easy too!!!

Second, I am waiting to get my tree until my husband gets home from a deployment (not anything war related). I decided to wait for him and because my three male dogs think their Christmas gift is that I brought a place to pee into the house for them. We can't put anything under the tree except newspaper until the night before Christmas for fear of someone marking their territory!!

I have to ship gifts to family all over, so gifts have to get bought and wrapped early. They were all sent last week, and I am done with the husband too. So now I feel completely bored and like I am forgetting to do something.

I had the WORST time with my father- and brother-in laws.....I ended up getting an indoor herb garden for the father because he likes to garden but can only do so a few months out of the year.....and the brother in law got a book.

We just got our Christmas tree tonight! It really put me in the Christmas spirit :). I have a little x-mas shopping done, but this is the first year that I've really struggled on what to get people.
I have no idea what to get my boyfriend's parents. The last couple of years I got them joint presents. This year I think I'm going to get them separate presents. My boyfriend doesn't even know what to get them himself, so he's little help.

oh yeah.. P.S. i want to get all my sisters a little something, but what? What's the best thing to give 40+ girls? lol.

Um hon, BART is one of the easiest systems to use, EVAH! :D

Oh yeah, I am over standing in the line at the post office! All of our friends and family are far away and I get stuck doing Mr. 1228's dirty work...shipping gifts to his family in Canada

Every year it seems harder and harder to get people gifts for christmas- especially my mom and bf's mom! If they want anything, they basically just buy it for themselves. Eek and I need to make my mom's christmas extra special because her birthday gift was not so good.
What's worse is that I need to help my dad out this year especially (mom's turning 50 and 30th wedding aniversary), but he won't take the initiative. eek people need to stop buying things they want from about labor day on!

We just put our tree up in our living room. This is our first year in this house and the first year we've used this tree (we bought it day after Christmas 2 years ago). We failed to realize that the 6.5 foot tree would look extremely teeny with our 10 foot ceilings. We bought a 9.5 foot tree today because we couldn't stand looking at the poor tiny tree!

AXO Alum, I'm PMing you :)

I love to give out ornaments! Get a box of the glass balls, and use a paint pen to write your letters on it. When the paint dries, on the other side maybe write something like "Merry Christmas 2006! Love, (Insert Name Here)"
They're always a big hit.

I'm having a hard time getting into the spirit of the season this year. The house is decorated, most of the presents are bought.. about half are wrapped. There is still a lot baking to do and three dinners to provide for various family get togethers. I usually love this season and enjoy it all but for some reason, this year, it all just feels like a chore. I wish I could snap out of it.

Agreed. Here's a little holiday comraderie for you and <<hugs>>.

I've been under the weather (nothing serious) since Turkey Day and am just getting back to semi-human. I feel like I'm two weeks behind on holiday prep, although it really isn't that bad. DH cut the tree on Saturday, brought it inside and did the lights yesterday. Most gifts but the stocking stuffers and such are already purchased, but still need to wrap and ship a few final ones in the next few days. Will wrap the guys' gifts next Monday night while they're all off at the hockey game. Hopefully can get the tree and house decorated this week. I'm all ready to bake, just don't have the energy or lack of cough to even consider starting that quite yet. Haven't even thought about Christmas Eve or Christmas dinner. It's the one year I wish we had an option to dine out instead of cooking.

PS--for those of you who need to hide gifts from prying eyes, luggage works wonders!

Puhlease! Unless there were locks on the luggage, that's the first place I looked as a child - yeah, I was *that* kid :o Glad you are starting to feel better.

I can't believe its just 2 weeks from today! I feel like there is so much to be done still -- but there's really not (except for deciding whether or not to tell hubby exactly what I want!) -- I do want to get some baking done.

epchick - make cookies & give them out. I just found the coolest thing at our Sam's Club -- sugar cookie dough SHEETS! Each sheet makes about a dozen cookies (depending on the size of your cutter) & it comes with red & green frosting. I bought it because I needed to make the apple taffy pizza from Pampered Chef - and it was much easier to put two side by side & cook it than to have to make the dough, refrigerate it, then roll out dough and all that mess.

Or, if you are crafty (and I am not, but they still looked cute), I bought the clear glass star ornaments from the craft store ($1 ea - but they were 40% off) & a pack of glitter paint (the kid kind sold in the plastic tubs that are all hooked together - a whopping 97c) -- I just made small circles in red, green, and gold all over.

I definitely looked in there when I was younger. Eventually my mom wisened up and just started ordering all of my gifts and having them shipped to her office so I wouldn't find them no matter how hard I looked.

I don't even have an excuse of being sick! I think everything is just now catching me up to me from when my mom was sick this summer. Can that be possible? It's the only thing I can think of.

I hide the kids' gifts in the empty boxes from the Christmas decorations. After we do the decorating, the gifts go in there and back under the stairs. They've never checked there yet!

Santa and 4 of the reindeers sing
 

My mom got lucky for hiding our presents...my family has three girls and my mom's sister has three boys, and since they did all their shopping together anyway, they just went home with each other's bags, so if we looked, all we'd find is boy toys.

And I like the idea of the ornaments as a present for sisters, and definitely the idea of baking, who wouldn't want some homemade cookies or fudge?! :)

Sneaky little thing even then I see.:confused:

A grammatically correct Tom Earp post. What happened- did you finally clean out the beer distributor?

BWAH HA HA

My parents hid my presents in my dresser last year. It was hilarious. I came home for Christmas a few days beforehand and they knew I was too tired to put my clothes away so I wouldn't go in there. ;)

I did decide to put up a tree this year (at first I wasn't going to because our house is a complete disaster area) so we got one yesterday and I decorated it last night. I will admit, I'm glad I gave in because it looks (and smells) so nice.

I always looked for my presents and knew all the usual hiding places: my parents' closet, the hall closets, the garage, the trunk of the car, etc... My husband now either waits until the last minute to buy my presents or keeps them at work so I don't find them.

Our presents are always in the closet under the stairs. It's kept locked and when we were little we didn't know where the keys were. Now, it's just not fun to find out your presents ahead of time! :)

That is HILARIOUS! Sounds like something my parents would do.

So we're having a Holiday Lunch Potluck at work on Friday and I don't know what to bring. Most people are bringing dessert or chips and dip, so I kinda want to make actual food. The only thing is that it needs to be something not too hard to make and that will taste good even though I'm bringing it in at 9am and we're not eating until noon. Anyone have any ideas?

I'm a huge fan of sesame string bean salad. Pretty easy to make and tastes amazing.

Depending on what my unit was assigned (our total area has ~ 100 people, so we sign up for stuff to spread it out) I used to make a taco dip that was pretty easy, but sounds like that's covered.

What about something in a crock pot? Like lil' smokies. Those are pretty easy, unless you don't like meat or wouldn't have access to a outlet.

*BUMP*

Ok the holidays might be 56 days away, but this year's will be a big one. It's the first one my boyfriend and I are living together and we are trying to buy presents early and spread it out.

Here's where I need some help. The boyfriend's brother is getting married right before Thanksgiving, and the combined family equals 5 kids.

Since we're broke and trying to save for a house, what can you buy for five kids ranging in age from 6-13 and is under $20? I have no frame of reference for this thing so I'm hoping GC can help!

If it's just a "gesture" gift, my aunt sent us these cookies from Lands End last year and they were a BIG hit -- http://www.landsend.com/pp/Peppermin...&origin=search

I also saw on another message board how to make them yourself so if you want to send more than what comes in the tin and make it more personal by decorating your own box or tin to send them in (if you're crafty), then I can send you that too. Extended family gifts are the most stressful part of the holidays!

$20 for 5 gifts? Maybe a gumball for each of them? :p

Seriously, maybe buy them a DVD that they could all watch Like Shrek the Third or something. If you don't mind spending a little bit more, you could buy them a membership to a local museum or the zoo. My brother always gets us a membership to the zoo and I think it is around $70 for a family membership- which includes two adults and all children in the household under the age of 21. If you get that, then you could say it is for the entire family and not have to buy a gift for the brother and new wife.

Do you mean under $20 apiece or under $20 for all of them? And will they all be in the same (blended) family?

Boys? Girls?

Whoops, let me clarify, we're looking to spend around $20 each on the 5 children.
Girl-9
2 Boys-11
1 Boy-13

This is the total of the blended family. I've attempted to hint at a secret santa type of thing, but these are the boyfriend's relatives, so I'm not going to butt in.

And please no cash, we just went through that with these kids and a big birthday party for 4 of them and it was nightmare. Let's just say I was embarrassed as a guest.

I really loved the zoo or other family membership idea - something the whole family can enjoy together all year.