My Christmas List

I was tagged by Basinah at The Wolf and The Crow to participate in a fun Christmas meme.

As usual, there are the rules before I get to the fun part:

Want to play along?

Copy and paste the questions into your blog,

•Then tag 5 or more of your favorite blogs, and leave them a comment telling them they’ve been tagged.

•When you post on your blog, please spread some Christmas Cheer, and leave a link back to Heather's blog (Top 10 Christmas), and the blog that you were tagged by.

Heather would like any blogger to participate in this meme, even if you have not been tagged She will go back and add your blog link to the list if you wanna play along.


1. Have you started your Christmas shopping?
I have, indeed.  However, due to budget constraints all of our gifts this year are custom made, so it's taking me forever to finish them. (This is the sucky part of letting your family know about your blog - I desperately want to show you all what I'm making, but I don't want to spoil all the Christmas gift-opening fun!)

2. Tell me about one of your special traditions.
One of my all time favorite holiday traditions is setting up our Christmas Village.  Long before me, Stonewall started putting together his own Department 56 Christmas Village.  Now we are building it up together.  We mainly buy from the North Pole series, but we have pieces from several different series.

Our 2008 Christmas Village

My two favorite Village stores - the Barbie Store and the Pet Store.

3. When do you put up your Tree?
Normally, our tree doesn't go up until about the week before Christmas.  However, this year, with it being Lil Mootz's first Christmas, I was super excited to get our tree up ASAP.  We decorated our tree last weekend and you can check it out here: Our Christmas Tree!

4. Are you a Black Friday shopper?
H-E-double hockey sticks, NO!  This year I had to go to Target on Black Friday to buy a few last minute things for my sister's bridal shower (I totally wasn't even thinking when I made that plan a few days earlier) and it was absolute torture and misery.  The line snaked the whole way through the store.  I will NEVER make the mistake of going out on Black Friday, either for Christmas gifts or just for something random, again.   

5. Do you travel at Christmas or stay home?
We stay at home.  Well, we stay in our respective home county.  We open gifts at our house first thing in the morning.  Then we travel to my uncle's house for Christmas brunch.  After that we visit my parents and Stonewall's parents.  So while technically we don't "travel" for Christmas, we do rack up the miles in a 20 mile radius.

6. What is your funniest Christmas memory?
Hmmmm...there have been so many funny Christmas memories.  One that jumps to mind was Christmas 2005.  Stonewall and I had just met, so I was still living with my parents.  For Christmas that year we decided we would go on a cruise instead of buying gifts, so we had a tropical Christmas theme going on.  We took a photo of our dogs in front of the tree all decked out and we turned our favorite photo into our Christmas card.  Looking at this photo still cracks me up! Poor Boo all squuzed in there.

7. What is your favorite Christmas Movie of All time?
My all time favorite Christmas movie is "Love Actually."  You can check out my favorite 13 Christmas movies here: My Favorite Christmas Movies!


8. Do you do your own Christmas Baking, what’s your favorite treat?
HAHA! Hardly.  I much prefer to purchase my Christmas cookies in the supermarket or at a local bakery.  On the rare occasion that I do bake, I like pecan balls, sugar cookies, and my MIL's butterscotch cookies.

Wait a minute...after typing about the butterscotch cookies it dawned on me that I don't make those.  The MIL does.  So I guess they fall into the "local bakery" category.

9. Fake or Real Tree?
REAL! Always real. Otherwise, before you know it you'll be a saucy redhead trying to convince people your 4 foot sparkling white "tree" is "awesome" and "the way to go."  And it's not.  It's just not.

10. What day does the actual panic set in to get it all done?
Right about now.  I'm doing all my shopping online this year and these are the last few days when items can be ordered with "Standard Shipping" and still make it here by Christmas Eve.  After that you have to give up your first born child or you can guarantee it won't make it to your front porch until Dec. 26.

*Clarification: I did say in #1 I was making our gifts.  Basically, I'm using programs like "Snapfish."  Cheaper than normal gifts, I do have to design/make them, but they also have to be ordered and shipped to me.* 

11. Are you still wrapping presents on Christmas Eve?
I'm a bit confused by this question.  When else would you wrap presents? 

12. What is your favorite family fun time at Christmas?
I have two favorite family fun times.  Christmas Eve when we watch "A Christmas Story" and getting to see my entire family at my uncle's Christmas Brunch.

13. What Christmas craft do you like the best?
The one that involves signing my name with a flourish at the bottom of a receipt.  I'll give you a hint - it starts with "shop" and ends with "-ing for gifts."

14. Christmas music? Yes or No, and if yes What is your favorite song?
Sometimes. Not before Thanksgiving and about every other song after Thanksgiving.  Last year I made a list of my favorite Christmas songs and the list is pretty much the same this year.  I would add, "Celebrate Me Home" by Kenny Loggins.

15. When do you plan to finish all your shopping?
Well, if you refer back to question 10, you'll recall that by the end of this week I have to have all of my shopping done or hand over Lil Mootz and that's not really ideal. 

And now I have to tag (at least) 5 of you lovely people to participate.

Lin @ Linny's Vault
Jennifer @ Crazy Shenanigans
Steph @ Watching Airplanes
Jane @ Blissful Stedmans
N-i-c-o-l-e @ Flip Flops and Air Force Boots
Tonja + Jere + Kids @ Smile, You've Got French's
LaterG8r @ Tinkering L8

Even if you're not listed - PARTICIPATE!!