| Mrs. Murfreesboro: Here’s Top 10 tips to get ready now for the holidays |
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By: JEANNE BRAGG, Post Columnist
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Posted: Sunday, November 2, 2008 6:47 am
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The weather is getting cooler, Christmas is 53 days away and with that in mind, here is Mrs. Murfreesboro’s list of 10 things to do now that November is here (not necessarily in order of importance):
1) Get rid of any reading materials, extraneous magazines and newspaper articles lying around. Throw away as much clutter as you can. The Christmas catalogs are rolling in, ideas, for decorating for Christmas are starting to pop up and your printed material will be quadrupling. In two weeks it will be too late.
2) Make file folders for the following: Christmas decorating, Christmas baking and gifts. You’ll use the dickens out of them.
3) Make travel plans for and arrangement for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For that matter start delegating cooking assignments. If you’re really ambitious, you could start making some cookies or candies to freeze for parties or for gifts.
4) If you send Christmas greetings that include a photo, take your family photo now so you won’t have to wait until the last minute and start working on your Christmas cards list, whether you do it by hand or on the computer. Add or subtract to the list and verify addresses. I sometimes find addresses on the Web site usps.com (United States Postal Service). But note the word “sometimes.” Some days you can go to usps.com, click on “find a zip code,” click on “White Pages,” enter the information and an address pops up immediately. Other days it takes you to one of those sites involving an identity search of someone for $1.95. I’ve used usps.com for years and had about a 60 percent rate of success; but if you get even one address it is, in my opinion, worth your while.
5) Make a realistic budget for Christmas and promise yourself to stick to it, no matter what! Or do what the Myers Parsons family did last year after his wife Anne Nora was diagnosed with breast cancer; forgo gifts and make a contribution to a worthy cause.
6) Buy tulip bulbs to plant in your yard for spring or to force indoors. One year we went to New York City and I saw an beautiful arrangement to copy: a big, round bowl (20”) filled with potting soil, covered with live moss and pine cones with three white amaryllis growing out of it. For several years I put that in the middle of my kitchen table, but by the time the amaryllis bloomed, they were so top-heavy they had to be propped up with bamboo sticks. I’m wiser now. I buy one “fake” amaryllis every time I see one. Some are white, some red. Some are prettier than others, and they’re not easy to find. But I love the way they’re not matchy-matchy and stand up on their own – sans props. But if you want the real stuff, now’s the time to plan for it.
7) Plant yourself a winterberry shrub (ilex verticillata). This is my favorite shrub. I love it, because it is a holly that has produces berries in the summer. In the fall the leaves turn yellow and drop off the branches one day, and you are left with brilliant red berries on bare stalks. If you find winterberry branches at a florist at Christmas, they sell for about $18 a stem and last beautifully in arrangements. But if you grow one at home you can enjoy the brilliant red berries all winter long. They are especially beautiful contrasted with the white snow. But be warned: buy from a reputable nursery because you need both male and female plants for pollination. Winterberry is particularly beautiful grown in mass, so if you have a spot to put these in, plant them where you will be able to see them from an inside window, and you will enjoy them for many years to come.
8) Clean out your refrigerator. Throw away anything out of date and put the containers in the recycle bin. If you are lucky enough to have (as my friend Missy calls it) a “beer refrigerator (one for the overflow), take all the condiments you rarely use (like oyster sauce) and store them there until after the New Year. Chances are you’ll find out you can live without half the stuff and throw it all away when January rolls around.
9) This is the season of Thanksgiving, so get out your calendar and write something for which you are grateful on every single day of the month ... and meditate about it during the day. I just returned from being in the cold and decided to write, “seat warmers” (those heaters in the upholstery of some cars) on my list. Man, those things are great! Everyone’s list has the potential for being very different and very personal, but I’ll bet “My family,” “My church,” “Being able to vote,” and “Living in America,” will be on every one.
10) Drop by the Peddler to see their breath-taking Christmas decorations before they get “picked over” as co-owner Jane Jones says. If the Peddler doesn’t inspire you, nothing will.
And finally, enjoy the calm before the storm ... because it’s a brewing. And if I take my own advice (which I plan to do), I’ll be a step ahead of the game.
‘Til next week.
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