Dec 06 2006
Suzy’s Holiday Survival Guide
I may not have decked my halls with boughs of holly*, but I have decked my window boxes with holly bushes. Also tiny juniper trees. Aren’t they cute? And a wreath for the front door,
with a couple of
Charlie Brown-ish cedars on either side.
You already know I have the tree up and lit, so let the holidays begin!
And don’t hate me because I have my Christmas shopping done. There are much better reasons.
Here’s how I do it:
- Buy things as you see them through the year, instead of waiting until the week (or day) before Christmas. At a craft fair in the summer and see something your Mom would love? Buy it and put it away in a box or bag with the other gifts-to-be (so you can find them when it’s time to wrap them).
- Buy as much as you can on the net, to avoid the horrror of malls, which are too hot and too full of other people.
- Get everything gift-wrapped if you can. Leave it to the professionals! It will look better, and so will you, bein’ that you’re less stressed and all. You can limit your part of the task to addressing the little cards on the (beautifully wrapped) presents and taking the credit.
- If you can’t think of a gift to give, make it alcoholic, even if the recipient isn’t alcoholically inclined. He or she either has guests/friends who are, or is hiding something. Make it cute, like this fab little gift from our amis at Veuve Cliquot, the merriest and most welcome widow in the world. Once the champagne is gone, you’ll still have the glasses to break and the purse to carry (with or without champagne). The gift that keeps on giving!
While you’re there, get some for yourself and your guests. As with almost anything, better to have too much than too little.
I feel like a less larcenous Martha Stewart!
*When I was a kid, I thought Boughsofholly was a person, since I knew a girl named Holly. It just seemed to make sense. Of course, I also thought mincemeat was made out of mice after seeing a Tom & Jerry cartoon where Jerry was threatened with being made into, you guessed it, mincemeat. Feel free to laugh. My father certainly did, when I tearfully confessed why I refused to eat my grandmother’s mincemeat tarts.
Comments Off on Suzy’s Holiday Survival Guide