Well Hello There! Just popping in to check on your Christmas. I hope it was wonderful — ours was fabulous. MyDadLovesMeBestSister and CrazyBIL hosted this year and we had a ton of fun. Remember this little bundle who was the star of the show last year?

Well, he still managed to be the center of attention for much of this year.  He’s a big baby and he was in the middle of everything.  He kept us entertained during the down times.

Which were almost never.  We ate, opened presents, ate, opened more presents, ate even more and played some really fun games.  We downloaded a free one-hour trial version of family feud and projected it onto the wall.  It was SO much fun — I’m definitely planning on buying it for next year.  Our family splits up perfectly — MyDadLovesMeBestSister has 2 girls and a boy, and with SweetiePie, we have 2 boys and a girl.  Perfect family teams of six each when we added MeMum and BigDaddy to the teams.  I’m proud to say that the Thimbleanna family whomped up on the CrazyBIL family.   As it should be.

After the one-hour trial (which was really longer than an hour) was up, we played Catch Phrase.    For those of you who don’t know Catch Phrase, you have this little disk that you pass around a circle of people.  As each person gets the disk, a word or phrase appears on the little disk, and it’s that person’s job to get their team members to guess the word by giving hints, but without actually saying the word or phrase.  This time we played girls against boys — again, we have a perfect split of 6 on each team.  We laughed hysterically at a lot of the word descriptions.  The most memorable was when CuteNephew and TheFirstChild had us on the floor because CuteNephew couldn’t get his team to guess “Break the Ice”  by describing a hammer and frozen lake.  So he moved on to the dating version of the phrase and it went downhill from there.  The guys were just funny in general — time always seemed to run out on TheSecondChild, no matter where he sat — and  BigDaddy would get frustrated that his team wasn’t getting the word, so with no warning, he’d just calmly blurt out the word and pass the disk on.  Anyway, the girls won!  Again — as it should be LOL!

So, it’s all over for another year.  I didn’t touch a computer for four days and it was heavenly, although, I’m having withdrawal symptoms now.  Time to do some reading.  Oh, and the Gingerbread Houses were lots of fun too and as soon as I quit being lazy, I’ll get to those pictures.  But first there will be the little matter of a blogiversary.  I’m off to figure it out!

XOXO,
Anna

Christmas Cookies for Breakfast!  Yuuummmm — it truly IS the most wonderful time of the year.

The house is all quiet now — SweetiePie and the boys haven’t arrived yet, and TheManoftheHouse is out running Christmas errands, so I thought I’d sneak in a quick visit here in ThimbleannaLand.  We only managed to get four of our standard Christmas Cookies baked this year — Lemon Gems, Raisin Filled, Grandma Hill’s Browned Butter, and the we-can’t-live-without-cookie, Angel Slices.   MyDadLovesMeBestSister is baking the cut-out sugar cookies as we speak and we’ll decorate them tonight.   I’m hoping to sneak in some quick shortbread cookies tomorrow morning — just in time for Santa.

And, guess what else we’ll be doing tonight?

Yipee — the annual Family Gingerbread House Competition!  The teams have been drawn and there’s been some advanced planning.  Late last night, while sitting in the glow of the Spaceship Christmas Tree, I was reading over the gingerbread competition re-cap from last year.  It’s hard to see how we’ll top the last few years, but I’m really excited to see what everyone dreams up!

Ok, time’s up!   Wishing you the Very Merriest Christmas!  I hope you all have a holiday filled with family and friends, love and laughter, and LOTS of magic!

XOXO,
Anna

Ahhh. We’re finally starting to show some Christmas progress around here. The baking has officially begun with a small batch of caramels. I used the recipe for Fleur De Sel Caramels from Ms. Humble.

This recipe is a keeper – it’s fabulous.  I love that little bit of salt with the buttery sweetness. Packed into cellophane bags, they’ll make a nice little gift for friends.

The rest of the weekend was spent wrapping up the Christmas decor. I finally finished the big tree in our family room. Every year we have trouble with the lights and TheManoftheHouse has to fiddle with them and find out which little bulbs are causing a malfunction here or there. So this year, while he was out shopping, he called and said he’d found a good price for LED lights.  Oh Yay.

So, now the tree is all done and here I sit in the spaceship glow of LED Christmas lights. I. Hate. Them. Everytime I walk into the room, I have to resist the urge to throw my arms in the air and scream “Take Me To Your Leader!” Here are the top three reasons why LED lights suck (you know, aside from the whole alien thing):

• The lights are spaced almost twice as closely together as regular lights. Which means, you’ll have roughly twice as many lights on your tree as you would have with regular lights.  No wonder the tree is glowing.
• There are twice as many yellow and red lights as green and blue. That’s ’cause LED lights are “cool” lights, not “warm” lights. I’m betting they could put three or four times as many yellow and red lights and there would still be a blue hue to the tree.
• They’re fugly. Fuh. glee. They might be ok on a little one-string tree, but on a big tree, it’s not pretty. And I can’t even put a paper bag over it.
   

My favorite thing to do during the holidays is sit in front of the Christmas tree, late at night when everything is quiet and peaceful.  I can’t do that this year though — I’m afraid I’ll end up on Mars.  Which actually, fits right in with the week ahead.  Brace yourselves … we’re about to hit warp speed heading to the weekend!

XOXO,
Anna