Oh, Wait, That Was an Inadvertent Lie

CORRECTION: There are a couple major unfinished projects yet to deal with. I have about, oh, a hundred or so holiday cards that haven't made it to the mail yet because I still haven't finished addressing 'em. Yeah, but I figure if they make it in the mail before this year's end, that's WAY better than last year: We never sent any last year. Annnd, well, so there's the cards thing, and well --this one makes me feel bad, but I know I gotta cut myself a break or I'll melt into a whiny puddle-- I failed to finish our presents for the grandparents and siblings. See, due to a restricted budget this year, we'd opted to take advantage of the cuteness we have on hand and to make Christmas gifts for our friends and family. Excellent idea, right? No really, it IS an excellent idea, but like I said, I'm operating a week behind schedule.

SOME BACKGROUND INFO: The angel boy-O used to 'collect' pine cones galore, but his collection had to been restricted to a very tall, very large glass canister-like jar kept at the bottom of our stairs. Mind you, although restricted in size, what he'd collected could have easily filled a couple paper grocery sacks, and that's a fact... Well, he has a rock collection too, which is also restricted in terms of its size, also stored in large, lidded glass jar. Over this past summer, he wanted to add more rocks to his already full jar, and I'd told him he'd have to pick and choose which ones he wanted to keep in order to make room for the new ones. [SIDE NOTE: If this 'pick-n-choose-which-can-stay-and-which-will-go' approach sounds mean, please believe me: If we didn't restrict his collections somehow, they would take over every nook n' cranny of our home! The boy would keep every rock and every bottle cap he sees!] So, rather than have to go through his rocks at all, he decided to sacrifice his entire pine cone collection, a collection I'd grown fond of, I gotta say. So yeah, he bagged up all his pine cones and headed for the trash, and then, after he'd gone to bed that night, I removed them from the garbage before the trash would be set out for garbage day -he never knew this, by the way.

So anyhow, I was trying to figure out how we could make something meaningful to give to our friends and family, and I wanted it to represent not just our baby girlie, but our angel boy-O as well despite his absence from our home. And I could not think of anything, at least not until our baby sweet potato girlie was sent home from preschool one day with a baby-hand-painted pine cone Christmas ornament, including a photo of her attached to it, taken when she was in the midst of her paint-covered creative efforts. And voila! I instantly knew what we'd do for everyone! Baby-painted pine cone ornaments, and soooo, our baby girlie has been helping mommie paint her big brother's discarded pine cones over the last couple weeks now, which we will give as lovely lil' holiday ornaments! Brilliant, yes!? --except she can only manage painting 5 pine cones at any one time, and we've learned the most it can happen is once a day, only every other day at most. We've had FOUR "painting of zee pine cones" sessions so far (more like three n' a half), and the last session, she was like, "What? More of these pokey things? Again? Are you kidding me?" and she didn't last more than 5 minutes.

Yeah, so it's taking a while....