Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #355

Messy Messy Fail - We had a fantastic Christmas at our house - lots of food, presents and time spent together not worrying about the daily hustle of life.  The one thing I forgot?  The batteries - I ALWAYS forget to buy more batteries.  Only about half of the gifts required them so there was still plenty to do.

Tidy Victory - In past years I felt like I was making food all day, but now I've got my recipes down pat.  I always make a nice breakfast and a dinner.  Breakfast for the kids is pancakes (they're so picky anyways) and eggs Benedict for myself and my husband (Pioneer Woman's recipe of course!).  Dinner is always a ham with gravy, green been casserole, Paula Deen's potato casserole with rolls.  Dessert - Christmas cookies of course!  Dinner is especially easy because I can prep most of the food ahead of time so that on Christmas day, much of it just goes in the oven to cook/warm through.  This makes for a much less stressful day!

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #354

Messy Messy Fail - Biggest fail this past week was my lack of SLEEP!  If I can get to bed my midnight, it's amazing.  And not that I was going to bed really late this week (probably 1 am on average, alarm starts going off at 5 am) but DANG did it really catch up with me.  Looking forward to Christmas break is all I've got to say about that.

Tidy Victory - I've got all of my 4 Christmas trees up and decorated - our big main tree in the library room, a small flocked Little Red Truck tree in the living room, a white Places We've Been Tree with Snowmen (don't ask) in the kitchen, and the front porch tree.  Do you just have one tree up or several?  I say, you can never have too many :D

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #353

Messy Messy Fail - We had a beautiful assortment of pumpkins that we bought at a local Amish farm for dirt cheap and had arranged all over around our StarryAcres sign, our side porch and side entrance.  So as not to confuse myself any more than I already am, I figured it was best to finally get rid of them so I don't have dueling holiday decorations up.  However I couldn't bear to throw away perfectly good pumpkins, so I had the 6-year-old arrange them around the Japanese maple in the backyard.  I totally compromised!

Tidy Victory - I currently have 5 balls of dough in fridge and ready to make cookies.  I have discovered the quickest way to Christmas cookies: dough one day, cooking making another.  This year's assortment includes molasses, cutouts, peanut butter blossoms, cinnamon roll and spritz cookies (which I've never made!).  I may throw in a few other types as we get closer to the big day just for fun.  OH - due to overwhelming amounts of marshmallows in the pantry I will also be making Christmas rice krispies.  

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #352

Messy Messy Fail - Let's talk about how I walked around half of my morning on Friday with a giant shot of white dry shampoo on my forehead. 

Tidy Victory - Christmas shopping is nearly done and I am so excited about it!  Last minute shopping can be so stressful and it seems as though I am successfully avoiding it this year!