Christmas Notebook

We accomplished a lot this weekend. On Saturday, we did everything in the living room except the tree. DH put up the garlands over the arches and windows. We set up the nativity, decorated the fireplace mantel and groomed and rearranged the plants.

We also did a lot in the dining room.

When they come out of storage, the trees have to be fluffed and the lights worked over to be sure they are functioning properly. Once that’s done, we can decorate. This tree is decorated with snowball ornaments I made several years ago.

Sunday morning I made meatballs before church and put them in the crock pot with spaghetti sauce. Made the house smell good when we got back from church. It also made a quick dinner so we could get to the decorating.

I got this recipe from a board I frequent for recipe ideas. It makes easy meatballs.

1 pound leanest ground beef – I use 93% fat free ground round as that is what is available here.

1 box Stove Top Savory Herb stuffing dry mix

2 egg whites

1 cup beef broth

Mix all ingredients together well. Shape into meatballs and bake in a 350*F oven for 20-25 minutes. Yummy. They are even better after they have simmered in spaghetti sauce for an hour or two.

After dinner, we worked on the garland on the staircase. When we were ready to put the lights on they didn’t work. ::sigh:: I use tiny rice lights on the staircase, so will have to go to Hobby Lobby to find replacements. We are in a small town (< 5000) and to get anything at all out of the ordinary we have to go an hour away. A trip we don’t like to make very often. I keep a running list and when we do go, I have several stores to stop at. I’ll have to make a trip soon.

We worked on the tree for the office / music room. The lights needed a lot of work. I do leave lights on most the trees during storage, which works fine, but sometimes there is a string that isn’t good. DH is able to fix most strings with our Lightkeeper Pro, which is indispensable during the holidays and has saved us a great deal of money. It repairs strings that won’t light. If you use a lot of lights, you need to find one of these.

http://lightkeeperpro.com/

One string of small lights on this particular tree was not repairable and had to be replaced. And there were a lot of burned out bulbs to replace. This tree also has bubble lights on it. I keep the bubble light wires on the tree for storage and store the light bulbs themselves in boxes. We had to count the bubble lights several times to be sure we weren’t leaving any empty sockets on the tree. All the work with the lights took a while. I am hoping to get the tree decorated today.

~~Rhonda