Quick Takes Volume 53

~1~

Last Sunday I pestered Bryan into making me a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  Thanks to expired baking soda or old flour or a combination of the two they came out flat.  So the cookie fail prompted me to check out the spice cabinet.  Did you know that spices, actual spices, have expiration dates?  I didn't.  We're not going to discuss the spices we use that expired around about 4 or 5, ok, FIVE years ago.  For those of you who might be wondering, no, you won't die if you consume spices that are years past their expiration date.  The family and I are living proof.

~2~

I'm pretty sure I'm done Christmas shopping now.  I have a few items left to wrap and I'll have all of the wrapping done, too.  I'm just not feeling incredibly motivated to wrap gift cards and packages that took over ten days to arrive.  Katie has decided today that she will now start to attempt unwrapping the presents.  I managed to save a package from certain unwrapping after she started to tear into it.

~3~

The Christmas tree that Bryan set up for me the Friday before the first Sunday of Advent is still undecorated, unless we count the tree skirt and the candy canes I put on the top two thirds of the tree decorated.  The bottom third is bare because a certain child thinks it's her job to remove the candy canes and toss them on the kitchen floor.  After the first few candy canes were shattered I moved them all out of toddler striking zone.  I will have him set up the family room tree this weekend.  I suppose I should put out some sort of effort to decorate the first tree before I have two undecorated trees in the house.

~4~

I think Katie is on a mission to make every cup she drinks from leak.  She insists on drinking her cups with the spout upside down and that causes the vent to leak juice.  I think it's possible that she's also blowing air into the cup since she has this amazing ability to empty the contents of an entire sippy cup onto herself and her carseat in the ten minutes that it takes me to drive to Target.  I'm not a fan of dismantling her car seat to remove the cover.  Perhaps it's time I start using one of the car seats I got as a  review product that has an easy to remove seat cover.  I just have to get over the fact that I don't like the color of the cover.  Then again,  I could always just buy her some cups that don't have vents.  Maybe that will solve the problem.

~5~

I finally got my Christmas cards ordered and mailed out this week.  For some reason my sweater came out looking a bit purple on the cards but I wasn't about to spend another minute worrying about these cards.  Instead of taking them back to Sam's Club and asking them to redo them I just mailed them out.  If you have a Sam's membership and you still haven't ordered your cards, they have some unbelievable prices.  I got 50 photo cards for $14.50. 

~6~

You know that saying "Haste makes waste?"  I'm always saying it to the girls when they're rushing about and shortcutting their chores and homework.  Well, I didn't bother to check my Christmas card mailing list to see how many cards I needed.  I assumed that I probably only needed 40 or so since we've had a lot of deaths in the family over the years.  Apparently I needed somewhere around 60 cards. Haste makes waste!  So I decided to to with hold mailing cards to some people who never send us a card.  I have about 12 cards that are sitting in my dining room that can be mailed out to people if they happen to send us a card.  Since the in-laws pretty much act like we don't exist these days, I think I'll have a few cards left over.

~7~

I'm always amazed by the dumb products that you see hawked on TV.  Last night while playing around on Facebook I noticed that a few friends had posted a link to a steering wheel deskon Amazon.  If you need a laugh take a peek at the customer pictures and reviews for it.  They're a riot.