What do you do when...

your dining room table is finally cleaned off? If your house is anything like mine either the dinning room table or my kitchen counter has "stuff" on it. Clutter has always driven Gerard nuts and through the years I have become conditioned to not like the clutter either. I am the biggest offender of placing the clutter on both of these surfaces. Before Anna came home I had a pretty good handle on the amount of stuff and things that we had out. Now with the addition of her toys I am in a different part of my life where things may not always be where I left them. I do feel like I am starting to get a handle on the clutter again and I am managing her toys better. I love the feeling of coming home to a house that is neat and clean but I love coming home to seeing Anna playing with her "guys" better.



This past weekend I had that old rare feeling of everything in its spot in my house. Nothing on the counters or dinning room table. I looked around and enjoyed it for close to 30 minutes while reading Anna a book. Now that was long enough so I told Anna that it was time to start our Sunday project.

Last year during the holidays I was not in a good place. I felt rushed, bombarded and that the holidays came and went far to fast for my liking. I have to work on holidays that is the one thing that I dislike the most about my job. The holiday schedule wish list goes up and we get to pick what we would like to work. In the unit where I work I am blessed for two reasons we split the shifts for Christmas Eve, Christmas and the New Years holidays. What does this mean? Rather then me working a 12 hour shift over the Christmas holidays I usually only have to work 1 six hour block of time. Six hours is a walk in the park. I will be working Christmas Eve or 12/25 at 1 am-7:30 am. I should make it home for 8:15 am and hopefully Anna will still be sleeping.

See this all is complicated by the fact that Gerard is only off for the holidays if it falls on his day off no exceptions. I chose Christmas Eve so that Anna will be able to wake up at home on Christmas morning. I dislike that my work schedule causes so much stress for me around the holidays. Last year my friends were kind enough to give me both days off but I had to work the 2 days into and out of the holiday so I was wiped out before the actual holiday. I know this is the reason why I got so upset last year that I was being pressured to not be at home for the holidays. Being off for both Christmas Eve and Christmas day is a very rare occasion.

Wow way off topic here...So I want the holidays to be extended this year. I want to celebrate the season longer so I have decided that we will do a little something every week. This week I decided on cinnamon applesauce ornaments. I LOVE the smell and taste of cinnamon. For me, cinnamon is a very comforting smell. I know I have a few of these types of ornaments from about 20 years ago and they still have a faint smell.

The recipe is easy...equal parts of cinnamon and applesauce mixed together, roll it out like sugar cookies and cut with cookie cutters. Let dry on a rack. We added glitter to our ornaments. Ours are still drying on top of the dryer in the laundry room so I am guessing it will be a couple of more days before I can put the ribbons on them. I am really enjoying the smell of them as I walk into the back of the house. We made about 50 ornaments and I plan to tie them to gifts and keep a few for the tree.

Anna loved this project. I let her pour the applesauce and cinnamon into the bowl that I used as a child to make cookies with my Father and cole slaw with my Mother. The dough gets stiff so I did some of the kneading but she did mostly every thing else. This is a no baking project so that made it even more fun because she could do the entire project with my supervision. I hope to be able to make the salt dough ornaments next with her and the girls.













If you know of a good project for a 3 year old please let me know I am always looking for something fun to do.