34 and counting.

copyright Free Bird Art 2010

Holy smack!

I went to work yesterday and at the end of my shift I walked past the front entrance and lo and behold!  There stood the daunting reminder of where we are on the calendar.

34 SHOPPING DAYS until CHRISTMAS.

Wha?
What the hey?
How'd we get here?
I clearly recall Kal blogging like two weeks ago that we had 59 days until Christmas...wasn't it two weeks ago?  No?  You mean it was all the way back in October?  Well, didn't November just start?  Seriously?

Well holy schmoodles, I can hardly believe it.
I mean, I have barely given Christmas a thought and now I am feeling the old anxiety kicking in full and good.

Not that we go crazy around here.  Christmas will be way scaled back on account of the lack of working I did and thereby the lack of money I made this year, but that doesn't even matter.  We usually don't go too gangbusters on gifts anyway.  The kids get gifts--we don't--and neither do any of the adults in our life.  It just makes zero sense to buy things for people who can buy for themselves.
No, none of that stuff gets me going.  The anxiety I build is around doing all the traditional stuff so that my kids remember Christmas as the time when we did crafts and baked and decorated and revelled in the love and warmth and color of the season.  That's what I remember from my childhood and that's what I want to give my kids too.

So, on I go this week to plan things out and get organized.

I should scratch what I said above about not thinking about anything yet.

I have made plans to host a crafts day with some girlfriends and kids, I am joining friends to take our girls to see the Nutcracker Ballet, I am going with my in-laws and my family to see the Victoria Symphony and I have been invited into a baking exchange with 14 other ladies (holy smack fourteen dozen cookies to bake!!).  
But that's ALL I have organized for myself:  I DOESN'T SEEM LIKE MUCH FOR SOME REASON!

So this week I am making my list and checking it about a thousand times and probably re-writing it a few hundred times in order to get this Christmas off the ground and into some serious memory making moments.

Okay, I might be a little crazy.  I guess I have already got some pretty important things lined up.  Maybe I got a bit caught up in the traditional Christmas frenzy of nuttiness yesterday.
Maybe, just maybe, I got swept up into the whole Martha Stewart-ism/consumerism/nutball-ism ideologies that surrounds Christmas and ends up making us all feel like lesser human beings because we didn't pull off the kind of Christmas that is showcased on the covers of all the home styling magazines this time of year.
I can't be the only one feeling this right?

Ahhh, but I love Christmas.  What can I say.

(I am still going to make a list and get some decorating/gift buying done...and hopefully also find some time to just kick back with a mug of hot chocolate (spiked?) and take it all in with a smile on my face.)

Cheers.

P.S.  33 days left now.  I know a pretty rad place to do some fantastic shopping if you're an art lover.  Check out Kal's 48 hour Art Event/Sale.  Starts today at noon CST (Winnipeg time).  GO!