I grew up in the Ottawa Valley and when I was a kid we had snow - lots of it. My mom has a photo of the three of us kids (myself, my brother and sister) sitting on top of the swing-set in the backyard with our legs out straight. Yes, a real swing-set!   I am sure that was one of those record setting years but the point is that when I was a kid there was snow in the winter!

Now that I am grown I remember the winter fun we had and feel a bit like my kids have missed out a bit. Up until a few years ago our area of Ontario didn’t really get much in the way of a winter - a bit of snow but not enough to really have fun (we don’t ski) just playing in the backyard. Of course this all seems to be changing - is it global warming? I don’t know but it seems in the past two years we have had more snow than my kids have seen their entire lives. And I hear we are getting more!

So, to celebrate more snow my photo of the day today was…. a big pile of snow! When I asked the kids to jump in the photo they did with excitement. In fact my son had to get to the top of the pile! Now, this pile is not like the one from my childhood, I believe a big truck played a part in the height, even still we will always remember the fun of lots of snow.

Before we dive back into more Christmas/Holiday season planning I want to share a couple of photos from my project day accomplishments!  Yesterday, my plan was to pull the wedding keepsakes from a blue rubbermaid tote and transfer them into an old hard sided suitcase that I picked up on the weekend.  I love love love keepsakes but don’t want them to be stored where we can’t get to them or in a way that it is hard to get to them.  By dividing them up into people or in this case our marriage we can pull them out on birthdays or anniversaries and look at everything.  For our kids, this means that the boxes of keepsakes will be part of their memories as much as they are mine.  If you have ever opened a box from 20 years ago and wondered what everything is - you will appreciate that you can create a memory in itself by opening the box annually.  This also helps you to keep the collection to only the favourites.

This picture shows you that our new suitcase sits ontop of my son Cale’s trunk in our family room.  Just seeing it there makes me remember so many great times.  Right now,  I only have our wedding bits and pieces but I am sure as I go through the piles of junk that are cluttering our storage area - I am sure to find some other special items from our marriage.   My other accomplishment was my order to Sears for two more trunks like the blue one (that was mine when I was a kid!) for my other two children.

OK - now on to Christmas planning.  Last week I shared that I use Thursdays as my planning day.  I look over my gift list and modify and check off things I have purchased.  I also plan the meals and baking.  I am a creature of habit so my meal plan and baking plan have not changed in 20 years so with the exception of maybe adding a new dish here and there I am set so this part is really done.  The other area I focus on today is making sure my three shopping lists are up-dated.  The gift list which is a master list of all things gifts needs to be updated and kept in my purse (that spreadsheet gift list I keep in my daytimer out of site!)  The other two lists are food and stuff - one list I chip away at a little at a time from mid October until Christmas and the other is the list I use a few days before Christmas, on the last shopping outing before the big guy arrives!  Because my lists are pretty set I am also using Thursday (and an hour each week at the pool) to do Christmas cards.  Last week I checked my stock of cards and this week I am going to go through my list of friends and family and make sure I have addresses.  Canada411 is a great site for address lookups. One thing I wanted to do last year and didn’t is to create a photo montage instead of a family letter.  For the people who we see often they know what we are up to - it is the people we don’t see we want to update.  The photo montage would certainly give them an inside look at our life and be fun for me to make!

So if you are looking for a task - pick one of these.  Plan the meal and add the ingredients (even what you have) to your master list.  If you have ingredients pick a spot to store them so they are there when you need them.  Cross these items off the list.  Remember to put the perishable items on the last minute list and the rest of the items on the main shopping list.

For cards - if you do send cards check to see if you have cards, if you don’t put that on the list.  Then check your addresses and spend an hour online getting the addresses together.

Have fun!

Helen