Twas the weekend before Christmas and all through the house...

Greetings, merry blog friends. 

Welcome to another exciting edition of what went down at my house this past weekend.

:o) ♥

 {recipe here}

I'm pleased to announce that I am officially ready for Christmas! Oh, you might be really jealous right now. You might be thinking, "Ugh. That DebTurtle is so dang organized."  Well, yes...but I had to be done a bit early this year to allow for the shoulder surgery I'll be having tomorrow morning. {Hm. The life of DebTurtle doesn't seem so awesome now, does it?!?!}

Anybody want a cat? Part II:

At first I thought it was just that big lug of a cat Whiskers Jay. Never would my sweet little Fancy Jane be so naughty as to mess with my little Christmas kitchen vignette. Turns out that this little tree is made of plastic which is exactly what Fancy loves to eat, so I've been cleaning up plastic-pine-needle-laden-cat-vomit for three weeks now. And Whiskers has been a monster where this tree is concerned. So when I heard the crash and found my vignette in this shape I was officially over it. I took the tree down. {That'll teach those cats!}

And the exciting news from our backyard is that Doug and I are the proud growers of the cutest little tiny baby tomatoes you've ever seen. :o)!!!

~sigh~ ♥

I made some more white chocolate goodness for a friend who is gluten-free {found the recipe here, but I used popcorn, M&M's, and cashews in the mix}:

Had a fun time shopping with Carrie on Saturday afternoon,
and we had lunch with our dear friend Janae too.

Planning ahead because of my surgery, I've spent the past few weeks baking mini-loaves of nut breads and freezing them to use as Christmas gifts. I've made banana-chocolate-chip-walnut bread, my grandma's zucchini bread, and I tried a new recipe for orange cream cheese bread that is a real keeper! {Stirred some chocolate chips into a few of the loaves because I LOVE orange and chocolate together. It was a huge success as far as Doug, Carrie, and I are concerned!}

I put together a bingo game for our upcoming Christmas gathering. I used all the names of our family {we were one short so I included "a guest" - someone usually shows up with a friend in tow...}. As each person arrives you check off their name...  {Note from Uncle Doug: You can't check off a name until that person is in the house.}

I made a spreadsheet in Excel and just moved the names around, sorted them, copied, etc. until I had 16 unique cards. I'm excited to see how it goes.

I finished up all the rest of my wrapping, including this one for my SIL {don't look, Laurie!}. Isn't that deer just the cutest? {It was a free printable I got here.}

Phew. Glad that's all done!

♥

So, I've been nursing a tear in my right shoulder rotator cuff for about a year and a half now and I'm finally getting it taken care of. I will be oh-so-glad to have that behind me! I've been crafting like there's no tomorrow these past few weeks, and my shoulder is paying the price. After tomorrow I'll be out of commission for a while - not really sure what to expect in terms of recovery but you can bet I'll be chomping at the bit to be back in the game. I have a few posts scheduled for this week, so until I return:

Wishing each of you an amazing Christmas time full of

love and laughter and surrounded by people you love.

~ ♥ ~