Today I had the house to myself and I planned to organize the ornaments before putting them away. You see, we had a small flood in the cellar on Christmas Eve. Okay, I'll back up.
Our Christmas Eve tradition is to have my family all get together for dinner. Since my Dad died (1993), my siblings decided to 'share' the hosting of the dinner so Mom wouldn't be overwhelmed. This year was our turn. Since our house is so little, I 'borrow' my Mom's house, and bring all the food and everything there. I had to work half a day, so I went out to mom's the night before, prepared anything I could ahead of time, stayed overnight and went to work in the morning. Then I came back to her house and finished the preparations. It rained this year... a lot. I'm very grateful that I had offers of help from my sister (dip and dessert), sister-in-law (jello dish), my daughter and her beau (salad and dessert) and my mom (gingerbread, and all her help cleaning and set up). We had a great dinner (although I 'fudged' a recipe and it didn't exactly come out right) and some fun games.... I had 106 Christmas trivia questions and teamed everyone playing up by age. Niece Kathy and I won. Also had those HUGE picture pages (Where's Waldo?) that were "Where's Santa?", each person playing had their own sheet and they had to find all the items in the photo (there was a list and boxes to check off of items hidden in the pictures). Niece Kathy won, again...(who invited HER?? LOL) and the last game we played was a sheet of 24 different Christmas songs depicted by cartoon pictures, you had to figure them out. Not sure who won that one (I think my daughter Leslie). By the end of the evening, we said our goodbyes to all and we bundled all my stuff in the car and headed home. Dear hubby had to acolyte at the 11pm church service, so he'd be home later.
As we got in the house and put things away, we noticed the foundation wall was drenched!! and the closet space behind it was slightly flooded. Not sure where the water was coming in from, but figured nothing else was too wet (upstairs closet, dry... ). We soaked up the water with towels, prayed it would stop raining, then went upstairs to finished wrapping gifts (Hey, I've been busy...), open up the couch for daughter and beau, put the presents under the tree, then head up to bed (it's now 1am).
Thankfully, the boxes that got soaked, didn't have anything in them that got ruined, but I think I'll buy plastic tubs to store the ornaments from now on. They are presently in small boxes, stored into bigger boxes... on the floor... in that little closet space that got flooded. Hence, the reorganizing.
Since I was using the sewing room as Santa's workshop, it was a disaster! Definitely NOT getting much sewing in, but I will eventually. (I have the week off from work). So, the plan for today was, I'll check on the 300+ emails and clear most of them out, just until 11am, then write my Christmas letter and send out the Christmas cards I hadn't sent beforehand (gee, I'm getting later and later every year) til noon, then do ornaments.
Well, in checking the emails, I got excited about the Happy Blocks (4.5"squares) on the Heartstring website, so I went up to 'just cut up a few'.... that's when the cleaning and clearing out of the sewing room happened! I did cut up about 10 squares, but I got so much of my strings/strips cut and organized, I actually remembered I had a card table up there!! Haven't seen it in months, it's been covered so by all sorts of stuff! Even organized a few of the 'scrap' boxes, as they were overflowing. Boy, do I feel good! HUGE accomplishment!
Okay, the Christmas letter will get written tomorrow and the cards sent out by the new year. AND the ornaments, too.
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