All Done, Time to Pack Up

 It's Thursday, December 28 and just like this year was the earliest to get the tree, do the baking, and have shopping done, it will also be the earliest to pack up the merriest of seasons. We had friends over for supper last night, so I wanted all the decor and tree to be in place for their visit. 

This morning, I've gathered all the clean Christmas mugs and got them ready to put away in upper kitchen cupboards and have retrieved the regular coffee cups from the same upper cupboard and put them back where they belong. My goal is to be done with Christmas by this Saturday. Today the village will be torn down and boxed up, and I don't know what else, but I'll set little goals for myself.

Last night, I decided I wanted to make for supper anything that was the anti-Christmas meal. We've had two turkeys (one that I made), and the days of left overs from that, and one ham dinner (and still have the leftovers from that), and so I thought... pizza! I bought the pre-made shells that come with little packages of sauce. I got toppings ready - fried some bacon and cut that up, fried some little bits of italian sausage, pre-cooked some onions, both red and white, peppers, mushrooms... One pizza was the "meat" based one with pepperoni, bacon, sausage, onions, mushrooms and green peppers, and the other was less meat with pepperoni, multi-coloured peppers, red onions, and olives. I served it with a salad based on one I had enjoyed at a restaurant a little while ago. They called it a Christmas Salad because it had red, white, and green in it. Mine consisted of greens (baby spinach and arugula), feta cheese, dried cranberries, red onion, mandarin oranges, and candied pecans. It is served with either balsamic vinaigrette or poppy seed dressing. 

It was such a nice visit and I sent them away with two cartons of eggs (always have too many). We still have no snow and it rained the entire day yesterday, with more to come today. Oh well, the water tables will be high next summer. I didn't go for a walk yesterday because it was a HARD rain every time I thought about it, but I want to get a walk in today, regardless because my body feels it if I don't walk for a few days. That's my post for today, nothing big, just regular life. Perhaps some of you are thinking of packing up as well, or perhaps you leave things in place until New Year's. We haven't done anything exciting for New Years for, well, years, so there's no need to keep things festive in the house.