The Case of the Missing Christmas Lights

It's been a nice Thanksgiving weekend, even though I didn't get quite everything done that I had planned. 
Long holiday weekends always feel like tons of time at the beginning, but never seem to be quite long enough to fit everything in.

We had a fun Thanksgiving feast at the home of some friends.  Less stressful all around when I'm only responsible for a small part of the menu and I didn't have to prep my house for guests either!  I've been bad about taking pictures lately, so the only one I really got was of our friend's young son enjoying this turkey leg bone. He has no teeth, so he was really just rubbing the gristle end against his gums, but boy did he love it.

The rest of the weekend has been equal parts starting the Christmas prep and just hanging out.  We're decorating the office for the holidays on Wednesday, including decorating our doors a la elementary school.  I had to do some prep work for my design plan so I've taken over the dining room table, which is just about the size of my office door, so that things could be done to approximate scale. 

That's before I got started obviously.  I'll share the actual design and those of my office mates later this week.

I got a little of the Christmas baking done and in the freezer.  Cheese biscuits are made because I need to take some to work Wednesday and also to my knitting group Christmas party next week.  I also made sausage balls and froze them raw.  I'll be cooking some of them Tuesday night for work Wednesday and probably the rest closer to the holiday.

I also got all the Christmas decorations hauled in from the shed today.  Everything that is except the lights for the tree, which have gone missing.  I had a bunch of lights and I can't find a single strand.  I didn't put up a live tree last year, so the only thing I can figure is that I decided 2 years ago it was time for new lights and threw them all out, planning to buy new ones.  I'm not planning on putting up the tree until next weekend, so I guess I'll be shopping for tree lights sometime this week.

The usual Sunday afternoon grocery shopping has been done, and the laundry is in progress.  Other than cooking dinner and maybe a little more work on my door decorations (which aren't quite finished) I think I'm done with productivity for the weekend.  I had hoped to at least get a start on updating the Christmas card list, but I'll work on that soon.

Throwback Thursday

I'm still at work, but I hated to mess up my streak for the month by failing to post on the last day, so I took a picture of this picture I have in my office of Rob & the kids.  This was taken in my grandparents' front yard Thanksgiving of 1998.  Carey was 10 and Logan was 7.

The thing I remember most about this Thanksgiving is that Rob fried the turkey but my grandmother refused to eat any of it because she was convinced that there was no way the turkey was cooked after only 45 minutes in the fryer.  Fortunately, my mother had the foresight to bake a small turkey breast in the oven, so MaMaw had turkey too.

Let the Holidays Begin!

Carolina Santas in the sun

The Carolina Santas are up, so that means the holiday season has begun!  At least in my home that's what it means.

Rob spent the morning hunting, so I started getting some of the Christmas decorations up.  My Carolina Santas are always one of the first things I put out because they make me smile.  So far, I've also got the wreath on the door, some bows on outside light fixtures and a Happy Holiday moose in the front flower bed.

But Rob's home (without a deer unfortunately) and it's time to get cleaned up, cook the green bean casserole, and head over to the home of some friends for some traditional Thanksgiving merriment.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  And if you needed any further proof that the holidays are here...my Christmas cactus bloomed this morning.