Building The Love Shack

I’m sitting here waiting for two cheesecakes to come out of the oven, which I will explain later in the blog and packing up the last of Christmas. At the same time, I’m going through emails for the blog.

The most popular questions I have gotten asked is where have you been? And why haven’t you been writing? Looking at the blogs post numbers, my number has been really down the last three months. The answer to that is the holidays.

Holidays here start in October for Thanksgiving and go through to the end of January.

November is a crazy busy month for me as it’s my birthday. Now for normal people, the birthday is one day, but for me, it’s the month.

Christmas got too costly for everyone with growing families and so we decided that birthdays should be celebrated instead. For each one of my girlfriend’s birthdays, I take each of them out for lunch or dinner and that’s when I shop for them. So when November comes, it’s my turn and we go out, multiple times, with multiple people and then there is the family dinner party.

Which brings us to December. The start of Christmas.

This year our family decided it was going to be an Artisan Christmas. Meaning everyone had to receive something hand-made.

That meant I hand to bring out some old talents I had not done in years. I decided that since I was doing it for the family, I also decided to do it for my co-workers. Yes, all the girls on my unit.

I spent many hours making bracelets and earrings for the family and bracelets for my co-workers. I also bake. And again since I was baking for the family, I also baked, yup cheesecakes and cupcakes for the staff.

Which now brings me to the next step of busy. Somehow within hours of bringing the girls a raspberry cheesecake covered in chocolate ganache, it got around my workplace about my cheesecakes. Now you know what happened next. I got flooded with cheesecake orders.  Which is why I’m sitting waiting for a key-lime and a raspberry one to come out of the oven.

The girls loved their brackets I made them, yes twelve just for work. Each one different and the colors were chosen by what I saw them wear the most. I now also have bracelet orders coming in.

We still have a few more dinners to attend and thankfully no more to cook for a few weeks and then Christmas will be over.

Why I have been at the craft table and in the kitchen, the Husband has a very important job to do. He decorates the outside of the house.  This event takes him two days, all-day. That is not including the things he makes, which is over fifty percent of the decore that goes outside. That again is weeks of preparation and each year it gets bigger.

I always have said that we decorate the inside for us and the outside for the neighbors. We make sure the lights come on when people will be getting home from work, but also we leave them on for the ones who are coming home from working afternoons and the ones starting the nightshift.

This year we received a very special present for his work. We don’t know who left it, but they have no idea how much it means to both of us.

We found this hanging on our door handle one morning. It must have been placed there the night before.

If the person who hung this should read my blog, thank you. You made the work of decorating and the time spent building the decore worth it. And Husband says next year will be even bigger.

I have fear of one day that our house will look like a Landing Strip at Santas Workshop. But I have to admit, the husband does a beautiful job and the reward for it was the beautiful note tied to the door handle.

To my very surprise, one of my co-workers told me her son goes to the school across the street from our house and she told me how beautiful the house looked.  Another compliment to Husband.

The cheesecakes are now out of the oven and again my house smells awesome. But I am very happy to have these ones going out the door as three months of holiday food has shown up on the hips and waistlines of everyone in the house.

Yes, that has put the whole family back in the gym.

It was a wonderful Christmas Season. We loved making the handmade gifts and going to the craft markets to find special gifts for each one. Next year we have decided to do it again with a twist. We are also added that a gift must be wrapped environmentally friendly. And the husband already has new ideas to add to his Christmas on the front of the house.

In the meantime, its time for me to get back to writing. I still have the year in review to do and it’s only a few months before we are back to the cottage.

We did hear from our favorite neighbors from the cottage over the holidays and they too can’t wait to get back to the lake. In the meantime… It’s time to start planning this year’s projects.

We hope your holidays were special. And I promise I will sit down and write more. Thank you for your emails. They keep me reminded that I must write.