time to package…

… your homemade vanilla extract. That is, if you made it back on October 1st when I posted THIS. Even if you were a few days or even 2 weeks behind me in getting yours in the bottle, don’t worry, go ahead and package it up today.

Here are the six little bottles I made. I used a small funnel to transfer the liquid into each container then folded each of the vanilla beans in half and stuck one into each container before closing.

Next, I printed out and laminated little tags and tied them on with decorative ribbon. Six gifts down, dozens more to go!

Luckily, that was easy, because the really big project for the weekend is to get this house decorated. Here is what I am up against!

This is Connor’s bedroom wall with the Star Wars mural. (Oh how my little boy loved Star Wars!) Behind that innocent wall, through that little opening on the left is a crawl space the entire length of the wall. 

Way back there in the back corner are 8 boxes of garland that I have yet to remove. To give you some idea of the size of the crawl space, I left a box of Christmas “on the rocks” glasses back there too… actually I just didn’t feel like crawling back in to get that one little box. I mean we have at least 8 dozen Christmas “on the rocks” glasses, so seriously, who’s going to miss one box of them?!?

The point is that yesterday – all by myself – I emptied that crawl space… and here is what came out of there, sans the garland boxes!

Can you believe it? This is what I have to look forward to, unpacking all of those bins and putting all that Christmas stuff up.

And pulling down all my “everyday” decor and stuffing it into those bins and then shoving it all back into that crawl space… Just to do it all in reverse order again in a mere three weeks! Christmas Eve is two weeks from today!!! How did I let this get away from me?

Yeah, I’m ranting and feeling sorry for myself, but tomorrow I will share with you what it is that has me motivated to get this done and then relish in the prettiness of it all. Be sure to come back and see, because it will warm your heart.

To be continued…