Why I Oughta...

Just placing this photo here as a reminder to myself this fall when I try to drag all the Christmas stuff out of our crawlspace.  This year, I put away 10 tubs, the advent box, the nativity box and 2 other small boxes on the top right.   Now I'll have a reference photo to understand if I have everything out for the 2015 Christmas season. The reason for this is that this fall, I pulled out ALL of the tubs that had *some* Christmas stuff in them.  There was like 22 tubs total.  Lots of them were half filled with stuff and a bunch of them had things in the bottom of the tubs that we stopped using at Christmas (like old lights, plastic ornaments, old tree skirts, etc). This year, when re-packing our stuff up in January, I consolidated everything into these slightly smaller tubs.  (That was the other problem...last year, we were using lots of big tubs - you know the kind - the ones that you have to spread your arms really far apart to carry them).  These are easy to handle, can

I participated in the Reddit Secret Santa gift exchange this past Christmas season and was matched with a woman in western Massachussets who was a foodie/cook.  I bought her the Flavor Bible based on her profile. My Secret Santa had sent me a note before Christmas saying that my gift was delayed because it was on backorder.  I waited and waited and waited.  In fact, Reddit bugged me to mark my gift as 'not received' because I think they wanted to close down the exchange and re-match folks.  But...my Santa was persistent.  At first, I thought I was getting scammed.  That...this dude was just emailing me to cover his rear in the Reddit system but that I was going to get shut out.  But...what was in it for him?  He could have just used (as I did) a throw-away account and moved on. He emailed me a few times saying that things were on their way and then last week, he finally delivered a UPS tracking number.  So...he was legit.  My Secret Santa gift was on the way. When it

When we were up in Coloma, we stopped at Silver Beach Pizza down in St. Joseph and I was surprised by the construction. They're expanding to add 70 new seats to the restaurant which will be a big help.  Not sure it is enough based on how popular this place is, but it should make the line move faster at checkin. I'm guessing they're aiming to have this new addition open and running for Memorial Day to hit the crowd surge they get during the summer.  We'll have to go back to check it out on our next trip to see the progress.

Our Christmas Tree met it's demise last week when I hauled it out to the curb.  But before it went, it was a fine tree.  In fact...I think it might have been our best tree yet. As usual, it was a Fraser Fir and we bought it from the same place down in Wilmington.  But...the height worked out great and it had a really nice shape. The tree dried out a bit this year.  The day we bought it, I filled up the chamber with water and then went to bed.  When I woke up, it was bone dry.  They say...you can never let your tree go dry.  The needles didn't totally fall off but as I was taking to the door, there was a huge trail of needles and clumps that I left behind. Note to self:  figure out a way to ensure the tree stays submerged that first night. Here's the post of our 2013 Tree .  We kept it in the same position once again. Here's the post (on google+) of our 2012 Tree Here's the post of our 2011 Tree Here's the post of our 2010 Tree

5000 miles walked, run, shuffled and crawled.  Back in June, Fitbit gave me my UFO badge for the number of flights of stairs I've walked . This quantified self stuff is kinda interesting, isn't it?  (and fun, too!)

 When the shoveling is done (or mostly done...), the girls wanted to play.  Don't mind if we do.

For a while, I was focusing on collecting spaghetti trim Santas so whenever I see one that is reasonable in price, I grab him.  In this case, he was on his own and missing Mrs. Claus (the pepper shaker), but he was cheap so I couldn't pass him up.  (as you likely can tell, I don't just restrict the things I buy to spaghetti trims any longer!) This is the second time that I've scooped up just the salt shaker in the set.   Here's another one from last year .  I have *yet* to find the pepper shaker from that set, but now I have two different ones to seek out to complete these sets.  In this case, the spaghetti trim one appears to be a Mrs. Claus, but the Merry Christmas one from last year is two different Santas .

As I mentioned over the weekend, I finally sprung for something in the 'vintage Christmas motherload' cabinet up in Coloma at the antique market. And isn't he pretty cute?!? Yeah...I said he.  It is a boy. And...as you can see below, he's a bell.   That makes 2 bells in the collection .  A trend, perhaps? He'll look great in the cabinet next year next to his fellow carolers, I think. Oh...and how do I know it is a 'he'?   This listing on ebay shows the 'kissing' pair .  Looks like I have another hunt on my hands...

As we've done since we moved in, we participated in the annual Elmhurst front yard Christmas tree tradition where we - along with our neighbors and folks all across town - erect small trees in our yards and light them up for everyone to see.  It's a really nice tradition and we have a particularly active block as almost everyone had a tree up. The full story is here in this post on our 2011 tree - which shows the sad state of snow that winter and looked a lot like this year's would have if I snapped the photo around Christmas. Here's my post from our 2009 tree . Here's my post from our 2010 tree .  Here's my post from our 2011 tree . Don't seem to have posted our 2012 tree. Here's my post from our 2013 tree .

I snapped this photo of the vintage Christmas cabinet up in Coloma at the Great Lakes Antique Mall when we were there over New Year's. This is the same cabinet that I took a photo of the past few visits. Here's the photo from our 2014 trip . And... here's a photo of the case from 2013 trip . There isn't a lot of changes between last year and this year, but I do notice a little tree on the second to top shelf and a few other items have been swapped out.  I don't have photos of the rest of their booth, so I'm not sure if the rest of their items don't turn over as quickly as these? I've always asked to have the case open and because of the prices, I've never bought anything.  Until this year!  I'll try to get a photo of that item up this week to connect the dots.