This Year's Christmas Fails

So, I'm just going to do my part to break the cycle of perfection that runs so rampant in the blog world.

Nobody's perfect. We can try to look it. We can try to act it. We can try to post it. But, we're not. It's just how it is.

As my gift to all those women who put too much pressure on themselves trying to keep up with the Mrs. Joneses out there on Pintrest, I give you yesterday and today and one from last year.

Overnight turkey- This one I got from a woman in our ward. It looked good when she talked about it on facebook so I asked her for the recipe and she sent her entire Thanksgiving file over email, which was very awesome and entertaining and I'm very grateful. 

I tried. I really did, but I think my oven's 170 degrees is less than her oven's 170 degrees. (The turkey does take a 300 degree stint at first to kill the bacteria.) And it didn't help when I came home from the grocery store yesterday morning and the oven was off. So I stuck in my thermometer and the temperature was ok, but not close enough to where it should have been at that time, especially since the oven was on when I left for the store.

The temperature did not rise in a timely manner. In fact, that turkey hogged the oven the entire day! Not cool.

We ate some for dinner and nobody got sick, but I'm not sure if I will try that again.

Cinnamon Rolls- This one's not a fail yet, but I'm calling it.I should have listened to my inner voice while at the grocery store and not bought them. They look kind of browned too much and I'm really not sure how good they will be Tuesday morning. The phone call from little mr. b while pulling out of the grocery parking lot doesn't help my confidence. "Mom, did you buy the cinnamon rolls yet because you don't have to. Mrs. L just brought some over for us for Christmas." Mrs. L is perfect.

Nuts- Well, almonds. Thirteen years ago, I made the most wonderful spiced nuts for Christmas and gave them out as little neighbor gifts. Thirteen years I've been trying to do that same thing, but no luck. This year was no different. 

Gingerbread- The boys really want to build a gingerbread house. I have some cute gingerbread house wall/roof/chimney cookie cutters and tried to use them tonight. The only pieces left uncrumbled are the chimney, one long wall, two side walls and part of half a roof. miss h told me that I should just tell them they're making their gingerbread house out of graham crackers. We'll see what tomorrow brings with their construction decisions.

Peppermint Popcorn=Broken Pestle- My mortar is now without it's pestle. Did you know that if you drop a marble pestle on the granite countertop, something will break? I'm just thankful it wasn't the countertop. 

Snap- I was grumpy a little bit. Not all day, but still not good.

Sugar Cookie- Nightmare. I made the dough yesterday so we could just cut them out and cook "later." Later turned out to be this afternoon and apparently this recipe didn't want to wait. I almost gave up and was about to take a nap when miss h said, "Want me to go google what to do with dry weepy sugar cookie dough?" Of course I said yes.

She found a fix and fixed it. Phew.

We only lost one little bag of dough.

The rest of it has now morphed into a large amount of cookies that are sitting on a big pink platter waiting for frosting.

Gifts- I am a horrible sister/daughter/daughter in law. Mom, K & G if you are reading this, I am so sorry. Fail, fail, fail this year. I think that this year I'm not a very good giver of things. I hope you will understand.

little mr. j, I am sorry that Santa has to talk to parents first when it comes to live animal requests. You know what we told him. And the only other thing on your list is something that I know one of your siblings is blessing you with. 

Cards-I love Christmas cards and sending them out before Valentine's day the next year. I love that my miss h totally did them for me this year. Just like I love that miss s totally orchestrated our Christmas Eve dinner last year when I was down, half dead with the flu. I remember her coming into talk to me and asking me what needed to be done- reality hit when I found the notes she took a few weeks later.

That's it for now. At least I think that's it. I probably forgot something big and will feel like a big failure on my fails, but I didn't take that nap and it's way past my bedtime, so ---

I just wanted you to know that I won't fail to fail again and I will always to be grateful to those who help me pull through my failures, except when they try to take my picture.

Turkey Update - Finally

We now officially have three Thanksgiving decorations living (albeit put away now as the holiday seems to have past rather quickly as are all the days of late) under our roof.

Earlier this month, when we only possessed two, little mr. b asked if he could please put them out as he would like some decorations. Of course I said yes you can with the reservation that they would have to be put away sometimes because of some unwritten of stuff that we have going on with the house at this time. He agreed.

So through the month of November, the two decorations would pop out and I would put them away and they would pop out again and I would put them away somewhere different and they would pop out again until I saw them and so on.

Thanks to our school's first grade's create a Thanksgiving turkey program, we now have three decorations to play that game with next year. And I didn't throw up in the crafting process. Thought you might like to know that as well. Oh, and little mr. j did not throw up either.

Can you guess which one is ours?

Hint: It's not the pencil turkey or the Phelps turkey or the soccer turkey (which I got a preview of via a very fun texting session) or the bear turkey or the gymnastic turkey. I wish we had been that brilliant.

Still, it turned out kind of cute and it's done.
And that's good because Christmas will be here in about 15 days and I should probably be blogging about that.
But never mind that - take a gander (hehe) at these turkeys: