'Tis the season...

... and I've been busy getting ready for way too many things coming up: an ornament exchange for our tea party ladies; Thanksgiving dinner; our Crazy Christmas Sweater Party; plus wrapping and packing up Christmas gifts for mailing; and planning for Christmas Eve and Day.

Once Halloween comes around, the rest of the year floats by on a fast-moving cloud... and ready or not, everything will pass you right by unless you're organized enough to get things ready before 'the day of.'  I absolutely hate to do things last minute, and I can get a lot of things done (and done well) when I have all the time in the world to do them.

Most of the Christmas gifts are wrapped up now, and nearly all of them are snug in packing boxes and ready to bring to the post office after Thanksgiving. I'd be mailing out the gifts now but my cousins in Arizona and New York would be texting or calling me: "Are you crazy? This is too much pressure! You should be arrested for sending out Christmas gifts this early!"

The rain today made it the perfect weather for decorating my 'crazy' sweater for our Christmas party.  I had found a vintage black wool sweater in a thrift store last year... very pretty knit with little gold beads and sequins and gold buttons... pretty, but on the verge of gaudy. Nothing that I would wear unless I truly had to.... which gave me the idea for a Tacky/Crazy Christmas Sweater Party. I had found that sweater too close to last year's Christmas party... not enough time to tell everyone about a Crazy Christmas Sweater-themed party.... so I put that sweater into the closet.

At last month's Halloween party, I asked some of the neighbors if they'd be interested in a Tacky/Crazy/Gaudy Christmas Sweater Party... and enough of them liked the idea and thought it would be fun.  Before the Halloween party was over, I told everyone about the sweater-themed Christmas party in mid-December, giving them all plenty of notice to find and/or decorate their sweaters. A week after that announcement, I sent out invitations for our Christmas party, reminding everyone about the crazy sweaters.

So this morning, out came my nearly-crazy Christmas sweater.... along with some gold bows and glittery gold snowflake ornaments that I bought last week. (I had originally thought of gold stars, but couldn't find any up here, so I settled on the gold sparkle-snowflakes.)

I used black thread to tack on the snowflakes... in a somewhat random-but-planned pattern on the back, front, and sleeves of that sweater.  Then I tacked on a gold bow to each of the gold snowflakes. The end result is an over-the-top elegantly ridiculous sweater... and I saved one gold snowflake and one gold bow to put into my hair on party night.  When I was done, there was just as much glitter on my kitchen counter-top as there was on that sweater. I have a feeling that I'll be dripping gold glitter everywhere I walk on party night.

I have two prizes for the winners of the Best Christmas Sweaters.... for the man with the 'Best' sweater, a Cowboy Nutcracker (that I jazzed up a bit so it looks crazy/tacky); and for the 'Best' woman's sweater, a city/country Christmas tree--- made of twigs and painted a glittery red but decorated by me to look like a city-ish tree, in a crazy/tacky sort of way.  My husband can pick out the best three for the men, and best three for the women.... then everyone else can pick the two winners from those six. Should be lots of fun.... and I'm already planning the prizes for next year's Crazy Christmas Sweater Party because I think this is going to be a big hit.

As I said... 'tis the season... and I've been busy.