After all of our family left from the Thanksgiving week, I started to decorate for the Christmas holiday. I wanted to do a few decorations, but I could not put up the tree because we were hosting a church meeting in our home. There was not enough space to accommodate a Christmas tree AND 10 extra people. We will be getting the tree tomorrow, and I am hoping that Michael and sons will put up the outside lights.
I am not a shopper by nature. However for the Thanksgiving holiday I did purchase two things that made the Thanksgiving holiday MUCH more enjoyable. First, Michael bought me a crock pot. I have never been able to cook in a crock pot so I have resisted that purchase. Michael saw a good deal on a large crock pot so he purchased it. I ended up using it when our company was here to make spaghetti sauce. It was wonderful to put all the ingredients in and just forget about it. The sauce turned out great because the flavors had blended together nicely after cooking all day. I didn't even have to stir it. That was a good purchase.
The other purchase that turned out so wonderful was something that I have wanted to do for a long time. I just never took the time to set aside the money for this purchase. We have had a nice folding table for along time. We purchased it several years ago as a camping table. It is long like a nursery table that would be used in a church. We have never had folding chairs to go around it. In times past, I have used our patio chairs to place around it. However they are large and bulky and would not have worked this year with all the people. I picked up nice folding chairs to go with the table. This made room for 6 extra people to sit and eat at a table. I bought 8 chairs and spent about $79. That sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but it made our gathering SO much more enjoyable. At Thanksgiving Dinner, everybody had a place to sit down and eat at a table. We used the table and chairs to have another card game going while the other table was being used for Dominoes. Michael has taken that same table into his home office and used it to spread out his work papers. Then when we hosted the church meeting and dinner, I was able to again have room for everyone to sit and eat at a table. This took so much stress from me because it allowed everyone to eat their meals in the kitchen instead of on our couch or love seat in the living room. This too was a very good purchase.
I needed a quick centerpiece for our makeshift table the other evening when we had the church people for dinner. I took a pretty plate, 3 pretty candles, and some branches off a bush in our front yard. I put the branches on the plate, added the candles, and spread around some Christmas ornaments. I had a nice centerpiece that took me about 5 minutes...that included cutting the branches from the yard! You can't beat that. It looked lovely on the table, and the children enjoyed seeing the candles burn. Each candle had peppermint candy throughout. That was a novelty for the children. I hope these ideas might just help someone that will be hosting a lot of extra people this holiday season!
grace and peace,
julie
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