This is why tacos are more of a special occasion here. Maybe something like this for serving and storing? https://www.wayfair.com/decor-pillows/pdp/rebrilliant-extra-large-party-divided-serving-dish-rebr4851.html?

Sushi rolls

I’m actually (Gasp!) pondering collapsing Advent as traditionally practiced into the five days leading up to Christmas. We’ll do readings and light the candles everyday starting at t minus five. I can handle celebratory stuff for 6 days, but not 22 plus. Better this way since dh likes to drag random things out of his hat til Epiphany.

Yes, and some had wires stapled along the baseboards to run to the jacks. Painted over a couple of times. Really classy.

Buy gifts earlier, wait for decorating, baking, festivities later. I’m getting radicalized and refusing to attend any Christmas related anything before our kids big Christmas concert (usually first Sunday after first full week in December?) DH and I have been discussing this and we’ve realized we have no real family traditions with regard to Christmas, other than my parents expectation we will come stay a couple of days between Christmas and New Years. That’s easy. How we spend Christmas Day seems to center a lot around where his parents living and what their plans are. Are we on our own? Are they visiting? Are we visiting them? But now they live here and will stay. Nows the time to tell them what our plans will be for the foreseeable future.

So I don’t know how this works, because dh is the Techie one, but we have a phone in our house that shares cell phone number with my cell. So when my phone rings, the house one does too. But the best thing is, the kids can make calls from this phone whenever they want without touching my cell. They can even call my cell, so they can call me when I’m out. The limitation is that I can’t call it from my cell phone, so if I don’t pick up, they have to keep trying. We’ve had this setup well over a year, and I just tore out the last of the baseboard land lines last week.

Heels from industrial bread exist for breadcrumbs. Homemade gets entirely eaten.

I can’t think of any cookies I’ve made that my family as didn’t enjoy. There might have been some along the way. Their weird thing is their distrust of cookie swap cookies. They will never let me forget the swap when I brought home some salted (caramel?) cookie of some kind, and to their horror, there was actual sea salt sprinkled all over the tops. They do not trust other bakers judgement on these things ANY MORE. I was lamenting there not being a cookie swap with church this year and they were acting relieved that we weren’t trading away our cookies. 🙄 Bunch of party poopers.

Maintenance is simple and the purchase price is going down. Ours is a whole house unit. If I remember right it was somewhere around 15% more than replacing with a standard tank-based heater. They are worth it, IMO, but we’ve only had ours a little under two years. Unlimited hot water for less energy use.

Ten years is not a terribly long time. The changes will be things that are right on the cusp now. Self driving cars will be commercially available, but not mainstream, something like what Tesla’s are right now. We live not too far from where a lot of the research and testing is going on, and it’s SO CLOSE. Checks and postage stamps will be gone. Shoelaces will be gone. Tank hot water heaters will be gone. Grocery stores will look completely different.

I am curly and never got into curly Girl. Just no. Everyone I know that tried it, it didn’t do much for them other than to make them look ungroomed. Try getting suave professionals mousse “captivating curls” (Target or Walmart.) Smear it through your wet hair and don’t really run your fingers through, but smear it through between flat palms. Scrunch it a bit with a towel and let air dry. Try not to touch it again until it’s more than say, 90% dry, then give it some more scrunches to tossle it. The mousse is the best I’ve found for curly hair, defines the curl with no crunchiness.

I use fabric ribbon (without the wire) so I can keep it. I’ve always preferred wrapped packages to bags, but I’m super tempted by these festive cloth bags you all are discussing. We have a million Amazon ones though, so making more of my own might not be the best use of my time.

At least in my experience, today’s grandparents have more income than moms have time. Especially a homeschooling mom of six. The housecleaning needs to be hired out. As for shopping, does grandma have a computer? Can dh show her how to use Amazon? even if she can’t go physically shopping, it seems like she would get more joy from gift giving having perused Amazon, bought something to be wrapped and shipped to her, and given it to her grandchildren. 🤔 If these are not helpful thoughts, ignore. I realize this thread is more about navigating hurt feelings and relationships, less about the hive fixing Christmas for you.

This is awesome. I feel like it’s something I should have done. The tasks do sneak up though. Relatives age, kids start having more activities and more specific wants (for presents), more kids means more budgetary stretch etc. OP, I don’t have any advice, but I will pray for the conversations that you and DH need to have over the next two weeks or so. I believe you are on the right track and have received some good advice. ❤️

I’m only just this year noticing it on EVERYTHING!

I put them in a baking pan and pour a kettle of boiling water over them while I’m preparing the rest of the stuff. It adds moisture and some bend, but doesn’t really cook them.

I’m liking SW Incredible White right now. I’m going to sit with it for a while.

So here’s the thing. I hate how our culture celebrates Christmas. It’s this crazy whirlwind of activity as soon as Thanksgiving is over, leaving folks with little time to prepare for actual CHRISTMAS. Everyone wants to do a party or dinner or gift exchange or concert or parade or carol sing before everyone is already booked or out of town. And then there’s this lull that begins sometime around the 15th. Moms are exhausted but not ready to celebrate Christmas with their families. We have to conjure up a second wind. Meanwhile, kids have not much left to do. Im not sure how I wish things were different. I maybe wish people would not worry about who’s here and who’s out of town. Celebrate with who’s here. The others will come back. Stop with the obligatory gift giving to coaches, Sunday school teachers, youth pastors, pastors, mailmen, co-op teachers, hairdressers, etc, etc. or if you do, be discrete so that those of us who come empty handed don’t want to crawl in a hole. Im not ready. I’m still needing a gift for my youngest. I’m still stumped. Relatives are still asking what to order for me and the kids.

Adding a couple of picture of things that we HAVE painted. I’m not afraid of color, but I might be for the living room, the very first thing people see when opening the front door. Master bedroom is a grayish blue. Tiny upstairs room is a greyish green. Upstairs bathroom ceiling is aqua blue. You can see the upstairs hall and stairwell that has me baffled about the living room. You can barely see it from the living room, but I still want something somewhat complementary. This color selection is not my finest moment, but the men weren’t interested in hearing me panic about it being TOO MUCH! This area will not be repainted for at least a decade, so I’ve made peace with it. Everything else in the house is various mismatched beige and some dark red, the legacy colors we are slowly replacing. ETA: my phone really doesn’t pick up color well. The only one that really looks true is the Bathroom ceiling and the yellow reflection in the mirror.

I don’t see what you mention, but that Durango Dust is along the lines of what I’m thinking. Also, the color called Celery Salt is similar to what we painted the stairwelll, upstairs hall, more pale yellow though.

Oh wow! I do think that could work.

Whatever I do, it will be very pale. I feel like I can’t do cream after my choice on the stairwell walls. It was chosen on purpose to combat the illusion of walls closing in. Steep, narrow stairs, solid walls on both sides. The cream on these walls currently looks terrible against the yellow of the stairwell. That table was my grandmother’s!

Can I get some feedback on this room? It’s hard to tell in the photos, but this room is chipped discolored and badly in need of paint. It is more ivory than it appears in the picture. My problem is, I can’t figure out what color to paint it. The room is small, relatively dark, amber floors. The stairwell in the back is painted in a sunny yellow with slight green undertones. You can see it from the living room. I was thinking sort of an apricot color, but now I’ve convinced myself it’s too monotone with my floors. Thoughts?

Thanks for the ideas ladies. She has a bike, rollerblades, scooter, all of which she uses. She has an AG style doll and one Christmas got a million and one outfits from relatives for her and her sisters dolls. She also has a baby doll. She got a cheap karaoke two christmases ago from a relative. It broke and I wasn’t sad. Shes not really into playmobile. She has a bunch of castle characters and pieces handed down from siblings that went with a castle that has since been trashed. They played more with the pieces than the castle anyways, but now that big brother and big sis don’t play that anymore, she’s not interested in Playmobile. Reading is mainly picturebooks (Pete the Cat, SkippyJohn Jones, etc.) and graphic novels (Phoebe and her Unicorn, etc). Chapter books are read only when asked. She doesn’t have electronic devices. She shares an iPad with siblings and that’s how it will be. Sister is getting a video camera. I like the idea of an autoharp. I also like the play area for Calico Critters village. The girls room is totally torn up right now and they are living in the small spare bedroom. (Their choice. They wanted to move in after I did some wall and floor repairs and painted.) Most of their stuff is moved to the middle of their old room so dh and I can repair walls and paint. It’s been that way since the end of October. We are having a bit of disagreement over the use of the rooms in our house, so I’m sure that contributes to us dragging our feet on this project. I don’t anticipate any work on it before Christmas.

Dollar Shave Club?