Countdown... Well, its just 2 more days until Christmas, and other than wrapping a few things, I think we're ready.

I was baking all week, I made gingerbread men, chocolate raspberry thumbprint cookies, and stollen, wrapped 'em all up in Christmassy plant pots and gave 'em to the neighbours. With enough left over for our family of course! I just need to roll out what's left of the gingerbread and make another stollen. And pie. James said I have to make pie.

Christmas at E.J. Victor was interesting. As mentioned in my last post, for our "holiday lunch" we all (well, office employees) went out to a local buffet restaurant. The company also has an anual holiday drawing, where they pick out 6 furniture items in stock and "raffle" them off to employees. I didn't win anything, but it was fun to watch a couple of the others win. Their reactions were just hillarious! And, apparently, they don't mind if you turn around and sell the item. Most people don't, but one year one lady won a bed that wouldn't fit in her house, so she sold it. EJ Victor furniture sells for thousands of dollars! I imagine one could pay off Christmas credit card bills by selling one bed! ;-)

EJ Victor also gave us a $40 gift certificate to Ingles, a local grocery store, so I was able to get a turkey breast AND a roast beast. We'll be having lots of left-overs! :-)

Last Sunday James' gaming was cancelled so he was home and decided to decorate the house. He hacked up Christmas all over the place. Including George's crate! Here's some pics...(Photobucket has a new bulk uploader which is absolutely brilliant! It took about a quarter the time it usually does to upload these!)

Here's George's crate from the side (yes, it sits in our living room, taking up more space than the piano!)


And here's Bruno, sitting in front of it. He doesn't like crates, he's very suspicious of them!


This is the stuff on top of it, sorry its a bit blurry!


And here's our wee tree, next to the fish tank. Notice the stocking taped to the tank ;-)


'nother angle of the wee tree. We have a larger one, just no space to put it, what with piano and dog crate in there!


Yesterday was Yule of course, we didn't do much of anything to mark the day, other than exchange a couple of gifts. I posted about giving James the tiger already, and he did quite appreciate it. I found a small stuffed holiday tiger the other day at CVS drugstore, its white and goofy lookin' with a floppy green holiday hat on. I got to open 2 gifts. One he had found an old gift bag from a few Christmases ago (yes, we recycle!) that said "From Jack & Nixie" (his parents). That was a Kokopelli wind chime, which is apparently tuned to an old Navaho song. Kokopelli is my fave North American Spirit. Mischevious, and musical. What more could you want? ;-)

AND! TA DA! After we had gone and spent part of the afternoon battling crowds at Sam's Club (also James' idea!) and grocery shopping at Bi-Lo (a few items I couldn't find at Ingles) he told me to open another gift. We flipped a coin, and I opened the one from Bruno. My very own, remote controlled Dalek! It even says 5 phrases and its ray gun makes noise. You should have seen George running from it and trying to save herself from extermination! HA HA HA !!! Bruno just ran and hid in the den, as far away as caninely possible. He hasn't managed to figure out how to open the sliding door to the back yard yet. *snarf*

So, Christmas dinner will actually be turkey breast and lamb roast, because our foray to Bi-Lo resulted in me sayin' "hey, here's a lamb roast, lets try that!" Ingles didn't have part-skim ricotta, which I need for the stollen recipe, and was our downfall. We somehow ended up with a whole cart-load of food! After I'd already been grocery shopping on Friday evening! One main reason I don't take James with me, we get too much stuff! I don't think I'll need to shop now for about a month! EEK!  ¶ 10:09 AM