Once again — or maybe still — I am not feeling well. Fortunately, it was a perfect day to stay on the sofa with a nice warm blanket and a Murdoch Mysteries marathon and Christmas knitting.

Above, the front of #2 son’s vest lies atop the back. I’ve reached the under-arm bind off rows. I should finish it this week if all goes well.

The attic is the cleaning area on the Holiday Grand Plan for this week. We have a little attic but we never use it, so I can clean the rest of my house, which has gotten pretty messy over the past few weeks.

Here are the other things we should do:

Holiday Prep

  • Make one batch of Holiday Goodies.
  • Make one extra meal for freezer again labeled HOLIDAY MEAL.
  • Buy two canned food items from menus (get 2 of each item, one to use and one to donate to food drive).
  • Buy 1/8th of TO BUY gifts. Save all receipts, note return policy before buying. Ask for gift boxes.
  • Wrap and label packages. If needing to ship, get some shipping boxes now and store packages in them.
  • Work at least 1 hour a day on homemade gifts.
  • Make place cards.
  • Make 3×5 card for each serving dish, list what goes in it, garnish, how much before dinner can it go in and serving silverware used with it; tape it to edge of dish.
  • Be sure all dishes are clean!
  • Borrow or buy any additional serving dishes needed.
  • Buy reusable foil bakeware from party paper place.
  • Are linens clean and ready? Unfold and verify that all spots can be hidden by centerpiece.
  • Work on centerpiece.

I’m not planning to make more cookies ahead of time. I have two kinds of drop cookies and a simple cake in the freezer, but I’ll wait and bake the weekend before Christmas.

Here are some things I’m thinking of making:

I’ve bought all my Christmas presents and all the canned goods I’ll need. Wrapping gifts must be done, and of course the Thanksgiving preparations — including buying the turkey and baking the desserts!

I think it’ll take more than an hour a day to get the handmade presents done.