Well received

Lucy and Little Pink loved their new outfits, I'm happy to say, and my granddaughter was as sweet as she could be, trying all the clothes on each of her dolls, wanting to put her new pajamas on right now, and playing with the other little things we gave her. I felt so good about deciding to make her gifts.

While many children don't get a lot (or any) Christmas gifts, the ones on my list have multiple grandparents who have the desire and means to indulge their every whim. I expect many families in which spouses have divorced have the same issue. Giving experience gifts, such as the family museum membership we gave my husband's grandchildren, is a great solution and, if you ask me, giving handmade ones is another.

I will mail gifts to my two older grandchildren and that will be the end of the gift-giving season for my husband and me. It's not like my childhood Christmases at all, nor is it like his, but we've come to terms with it in our own ways and we're actually looking forward to just winding down, not being "on" all the time.

[There is a housefly buzzing around here somewhere that's driving me CRAZY! Would love to shoo it out to freeze in the cold, cold air we're not enjoying right now! Heh.]

One other highlight and then I'm going to knit for a while.

My daughter-in-law doesn't eat red meat, but my son enjoys a good burger or steak occasionally. He and I had discussed the menu and agreed that pizza (one Greek and one plain cheese) on Friday would work, and that a vegetarian lasagna would be great for Saturday.

Well, we have a freezer full of grass-fed beef, so I thought I'd surprise him with his favorite dish for dinner last night. I'm not quite sure how I was able to pull it off under his nose, but when I took a cheeseburger pie out of the oven, along with the lasagna, he looked as delighted as a little kid. His eyes, how they sparkled, his dimples so merry!

And it's easy-peasy to make, too. Mix up your favorite meat loaf using two pounds of ground beef, dump it in a pie crust, bake at 350° for an hour, top with a cup of grated cheddar, sprinkle with a couple glugs of Worcestershire and bake for 10 more minutes. Let it sit for a few minutes, then slice and gobble it down.

At the half

NaBloPoMo is half done, can you believe it?

While my posts this month have been, um, less than inspired – how many ways can one say one is tired of sneezing, coughing and blowing one's nose, after all? – I haven't yet felt like I needed to use one of the daily NaBloPoMo prompts. I've looked at a couple of them, but when I tried to formulate a thought worthy of committing to blog, it felt too much like an assignment.

Easier just to tell you how tired I am of sneezing, coughing and blowing my nose. Heh.

(My son has informed me he's going to collect a dollar from me every time I use "heh" in an e-mail to him. Heh. I like "heh" better than "haha," "LOL" or smiley faces, but he, apparently, does not.)

I've been thinking about Christmas the last couple of weeks. How could you not, when every retail outlet has been stocked and decorated since before Halloween? Maybe next year will be the totally handmade Christmas of my dreams, but it ain't gonna happen this year. I have lots of ideas but, of course, not enough time to even order supplies, let alone make the cool gifts I'd love to give.

I will be making doll clothes for my four-year-old granddaughter's dolls, and she also wants pajama pants. I have the fabric and pattern for those, although I suspect she'll still reach for a nightgown if she has a choice. She's a girly, girly, girly girl who loves wearing anything that twirls or has ruffles.

My grandson's newsboy cap is more than halfway completed and I actually think it will fit and look quite handsome on him. I'll post a picture when it's done.

Craftsy.com suggests that if you want to have a handmade Christmas, you should obviously plan ahead, and offers these suggestions:

Make a checklist of all of the things you’d like to make. Mark a calendar with each project‚ allotting it a certain length of time for completion. Gather up all of the patterns and supplies that you’ll need for each project in advance‚ so that you’re not running to the hobby store at the last minute. Be realistic. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to finish too much. These are things I probably should have done on September 15, not mid-November. I felt this sense of disappointment last year, and the year before, and have for several unfulfilled years. What I should do is make one (or more) gift per month all year long. By the time December rolls around, I'd be done. But it never seems to work out that way. How about you? Do you give handmade gifts for the holidays? How do you manage your time in order to complete everything on time? Do you (as I have done) wrap a photo of the item along with a promise to complete it before the end of January? Or do you ask for suggestions and go to amazon.com to do all your shopping in one swell foop?