My Quilted Fabric Christmas PostCards

I'm feeling good about where I am in Christmas preparations. Shopping is done. I believe stocking stuffers are done, but I need to go over them and see what exactly is there (I've been buying stocking stuffers for the past three months and I tend to forget exactly what I've bought!). My quilted fabric Christmas postcards are finally done and ready to go to the post office tomorrow. I am absolutely thrilled with how these turned out - a little work of fabric art on each card. I finally attempted to use my printer to print on fabric (much easier than I thought it would be), which really gave me a wider range of embellishments to use on the cards than just fabric. I admit, there is something about precision sewing that just appeals to me. The slower I have to go and the more precise I have to be, the more focused I am on the task at hand, and the happier I am. Go figure.

Mr. B and I have been Christmas shopping for our toy for charity, but the concept of a child not getting toys is difficult to explain to a 4 yr old who believes whole-heartedly in Santa! That whole experience didn't go quite as well as I'd planned.

Today I start house decorations. Our tree will go up, the boxes come up from the basement and it will probably take me most of the upcoming week to unload all the Christmas candles (I've been collecting for 32 years!), but I'm looking forward to it. Mr. B. has never seen my Christmas candles! For the past few years I've not gotten them out because he was too young to understand not to touch something so cute. We have already previewed a few boxes of them in the basement, and he understood how delicate they can be, so this year is the year. I should count them at some point, but I believe I have around 300 candles - from nativity scenes to trains, penguins to nutcrackers, towns and trees, from one-half inch tall to two feet. It's an exceptional collection! I will be sure and take photos to post here.

Mr. B's first school Christmas program is also this week. How exciting! I wish we had a digital video recorder so I could post his big event!

I've yet to plan out the upcoming week, but it will mostly involve wrapping presents and getting them off to the post office and decorating the house. Jeff's birthday is Tuesday, but we're delaying celebrating it until the weekend, as this is one of those "hell week's" at work for him, and it's all he can do to take time off to go to Mr. B's school program on Tuesday night.

Christmas preparations, so far, have been calm and orderly and completely stress-free. Whether it was writing down the To Do List or deciding not to make home-made gifts this year, I'm not sure. (Though I admit, I did make a few!) Whether it remains calm is yet to be seen!

Enjoy your week!