Do I write 24/7? No way. #crafting #writinglife #hobbies

Would it surprise you to know, I don't write all day, every day. I'm a 9:30 to 4:30 writer. I have tons of stuff to do around my house and have to squeeze it in-today is fix the washer day; tomorrow is a new plumber coming to fix the dripping pipes under my master sink; somewhere in there is the a/c man to figure out why there is weird programming on my Nest thermostat.

I have other things to do too, like reading!! And I'm embroidering on a needlepoint pillow and a 12 days of Christmas lap blanket. I adore watching a good movie and stitching. I like stitching so much, I'd stitch in church if I could.

So I thought I'd share what I completed last year:

OUR WISH FOR YOU

From all of us here at the Plotting Princesses, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a most joyous and prosperous New Year!  

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year @sloanebcollins #PlottingPrincesses #amwriting #fudge #traditions #MFRWorg

Christmas is my favorite time of the year.  I love the lights, the trees, the food, the traditions, and the spirit of the holiday.  I made the decision the last couple of years to not decorate due to lack of time and four cats who know no boundaries, and I really miss it.  The cats were restless last night, and I kept hearing things banging around in the kitchen so I finally investigated.  One (or more) had gotten a side drawer open and found a small Christmas tree ornament and was batting it all over the tile floor.  I hadn’t even realized it was in that drawer! 

Even though there are trees up and the store is decorated at work (my office is at the Neiman Marcus flagship store in Dallas), there are lights up in the neighborhood, and Christmas music is on the radio, it just hadn’t been feeling like Christmas is next week.  Until I got home last night and found that the annual Tin of Fudge and Cherry Mash had arrived.  My sister-in-law makes THE best fudge.  I ripped open the package, saw the gorgeous Christmas tin, took the lid off, and there it was.  FUDGE.  NOW it feels like the holidays have arrived.

Michelle Miles: Christmas Traditions

Every year, the day after Thanksgiving we head out to find our perfect Christmas tree. This year, we debated on whether or not to get a fake one. I was sort of leaning toward fake and flocked (because I love alliteration) but neither my husband nor I could bring ourselves to spend upwards of $300 on a fake tree.

I know, I know. We could save it for future years. But the biggest problem with that is we have storage issues and I don't think we really want to rearrange the entire garage to store a fake tree. Or even put it up in the attic storage space.

This year, Friday was rainy and cold and windy. It wasn’t exactly the best weather to get out and look for a tree. We decided to hit Lowe’s first and see what we could find. All the trees were wet because it had been raining for the last twelve hours or something crazy like that. We wandered around in the garden section looking at trees and freezing our bums off. We stopped to chat with one of the workers there who had been loading trees most of the morning. Granted, it was midday and there weren’t many people out there but there were a few here and there looking for trees. We knew we only had about an hour before it started raining again to get the tree home.

Not finding anything we couldn’t live without, we headed back inside and looked at the fake trees again. But again… we just couldn’t pull the trigger on that. Back outside, and shivering we were heading out when suddenly…there it was. The perfect tree. We snapped it up and got it home before another downpour.

Isn’t it pretty?