Advent week one-- and already I've OD'd on caffeine

It's so dark out already and it's only 3:30 pm. It makes me all tingly with excitement. I can't wait for it to snow (because in my heart I'm really just 6 years old) and I would count my first week of Advent a pretty fair success. I have cheese now and then and eggs for breakfast, but the opportunity to make yummy and inventive Lenten dinners wins over any impulse to have meat. But then, it's only week one.

Tonight is cabbage rolls, which I've never made before, and I had to invent my own vegetarian recipe because every one I found online was either stupidly complicated with a million ingredients no one would ever carry in their cupboards (unless they made these cabbage rolls all the time) or else they included tofu-meat. I have to say I actually don't dislike tofu "ground beef" but I shudder to think of what's in them. Tofu itself is highly processed, to say nothing of tofu that has a million weird ingredients to make it taste and feel like meat. In the end it's probably a lot worse for us than hamburger meat regardless of its being low in fat. Anyway, my cabbage rolls are only sort of vegan. I had to include an egg in the rice mixture to make it stick, but I reckon if you wanted stickier, creamier rice, and you didn't mind something more exotic, you could add some coconut milk and a bit of chili instead. Different taste though. If they turn out yummy I'll put the recipe up.

I'm starting to feel really overwhelmed by how much I have to get done before Christmas. I have 8 Christmas related sewing projects (plus some other odd sewing jobs). Next week is my ultrasound and my Christmas cards will be arriving so I'll need to get those sent off (we ordered photo-cards from Mac). And a week from tomorrow I'm having a big cookie bake-off-- and I want all mine baked in advance because oven time will be at a premium. That means I have to bake 3 huge batches of cookies before Saturday, and I have to go shopping for cookie decorating supplies as well. I'm trying to remember how I got stuck with all this and then I remember-oh yeah, I LIKE preparing things for Christmas. I also have to make a trip to the island to visit friends and get some special woolies for Theo and I can't believe November is 3/4 gone already!! December is always too busy and the last thing I want to do is find myself up to my ears in last minute sewing and preparation on December 21st. I want half my sewing DONE by the time December gets here. Which gives me a week. Yikes.

It's not that easy though. I like to sew but I have to do it when Theo is asleep-- and when I don't have other housework to do. Like make cabbage rolls while he's napping. And I only have so much energy to focus on sewing after Theo goes to bed. I love my sewing machine and I really do enjoy sewing, but nothing turns me into a shrieking demon faster than screwing up on my machine. I need to do the sewing when I'm calm and relaxed and not over tired or worried about anything or else one minor little hitch and I might breathe my own face off.

But the household organisation is really starting to come together. I feel like I've been living out of boxes for three years. We never really had enough space in our old flat and Greg isn't bothered by the presence of piles of unstored, unorganised boxes of stuff. Our storage problems only got worse when we moved because not only did we lose our garage space but we also needed to turn our bedroom into a working office for Greg's job. So for six months we've been sitting in boxes of papers and bike gear and old clothes. Oh yeah-- that's another thing. Only one of our bedrooms has a closet. But things are finally coming together and for the first time since we go married we can actually get out on either side of the bed and still reach all our clothes without turning sideways. Greg rearranged the room and put up tons of shelving and for once there's actually no boxes on the floor. It's incredibly relieving.

I also bought Theo his Christmas PJs. He keeps getting bigger dammit! Trouble is that he actually has fairly short little legs. He's only just started to grow out of pants he's had since he was 6 months old. But he keeps growing in the torso so his PJs stop fitting after like 2 months-- even though the legs are really baggy. Same with dungarees (overalls). We still have to roll them up two inches in the legs when the crotch snaps start popping oven on their own. Oh well. Excuse to buy really cute red and white striped Christmas jammies. And more dungarees.

So it's all getting busy busy busy, and while part of me is starting to tremble in terror at the thought of how much I have to do, the other half is knocking back another (peppermint mocha twist) coffee and saying "Bring it on!!"