Shortcuts

The kids went back to school today, after two weeks of Christmas vacation. I think it was the first time where we haven't had visitors from the U.S. during the break.  Grandma came before Christmas, for three weeks, including Miss B's birthday, but was home in time for Christmas Eve.

We loved every minute with Grandma, and really appreciated the time we could spend with her - in those special weeks in anticipation of Christmas.  But when she left, I realized that having a visitor right up until the few days before Christmas means those few days before Christmas become jam-packed with last minute holiday preparations.

Not to brag or anything, but I breezed through these last couple of days without stress, thanks to the shortcuts.  Upon reviewing my mental list, and realizing there just weren't enough hours left in the countdown for the cookies I wanted to make, presents I wanted to wrap, food I needed to prep for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners.  Go skating, at the rink in town with the family?  Of course!  Who wants to miss out on that!  Go to lunch with a good friend? (that, by the way, was supposed to be a back-to-school lunch date and was pushed back all the way to Christmas).  Of course!

Thanks to the shortcuts.

I took shortcuts wherever possible.  Knowing my patience level with baking in general, let alone cutout Christmas cookies, I only mixed a half batch of dough.  It was brilliant.  Just at that point where I was getting sick of rolling out dough, and pressing in the cookie cutter shapes, I was done.  Choosing just two of the essential shapes (trees and stars), helped my decoration assembly line go much faster as well.  It would have made the Ford company proud.  When it came time to make John's favorite christmas cookie, I shortcut that as well.  I only baked one sheet of cookies - enough to put on a christmas cookie plate - and I saved the rest of the dough to bake after Christmas.  There were still plenty of cookies, and no one cared that most of the cutout cookies looked the same.

My dinner prep shortcuts worked as well.  I sauteed one giant pan of onions, portioning them out and adding mushrooms and garlic to one pan for the risotto, and celery to another for the stuffing.  My Christmas day dinner list was whittled down to the bare essential turkey trimmings - potatoes, vegetable, stuffing and gravy. I was glad to have saved a cup of cranberry sauce in the freezer leftover from Thanksgiving, and even more glad to remember that it was there.

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas.  For the most part, free of the stress I usually shoulder, trying to make everything "perfect."  I was happy to settle for "adequate" in the details, and I think my family was pretty happy about that as well.