A Waste of My Waist(line).

What's a girl to do? With the new year just around the corner now, I'm starting to think of resolutions and how I could improve my life and health. A diet is my perrennial favourite. I mean who doesn't think that they could stand to lose a few pounds? But just look at the picture below. Between the presents Hubby brings home from his customers, goodies I make myself and lots of Christmas gifts we have a ton of temptation sitting down in the pantry cupboard. Very tasty temptation. too! People know all our favourite treats and weaknesses and send us only the best. So it's not like I'm just going to chuck it all out or something but while it's in the house I'm going to be feeling its pull just like a high-calorie black hole in the middle of the house. It's not just me, either. Hubby apparently had half a bowl of Bridge Mixture with his morning coffee before I even got out of bed!

How do I resist eating all these goodies?

So today we packed it all up into a box and tucked it away in the farthest reaches of the pantry underneath the bottom shelf and in amongst the garbage bags. We did reserve three of the nicest boxes of chocolates to pass out to the friends who are coming over tomorrow evening. Hopefully this won't ruin their diets! I haven't even thought until now about all the Christmas cookies I baked and the Yule Log, what about my Yule Log?

I'm clearly going to have to come up with a different resolution this year. I mean was it any more successful last year? Maybe I'll just give up eating tripe and eggplant instead. Yeah, I think I can stick with that one!

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

I'm hoping you are surrounded with family and friends and having a wonderful day.

Gingerbread Girls Just Want to Have Fun!

The Gingerbread Girl and some of her suiters!

As you can tell from the pictures my Christmas baking has started of course, and just look at how happy this gingerbread girl is in amongst all her cute male suitors. She’s probably going to need to remind them to take off their muddy boots before coming in the house! So far I’ve completed all the gingerbread and some of the shortbread cookies and even a pan or two of Rice Krispie Treats. Hopefully I manage to find the time to get more baking done. Let me see, there’s the orange-oatmeal cookies, the lemon flavoured sugar cookies, maybe a Yule log still yet to get made. Maybe I’ll save all the calories and just stop now!

These cookies are some of my all-time favourites.

The Turkey Drive challenge was a huge success. The Turkey scoreboard was completely full. Our original goal had been 25 birds and then it was increased to 50 and then 100 turkeys but we exceeded even that. By Friday morning we had collected enough money to provide 160 turkeys setting the bar very high for anyone else. I was so proud and still have a tear in my eye for all the kind and generous co-workers who really pulled together to make this huge donation happen. The stakes have been raised for next year and I know we will exceed them because that’s just the type of team spirit we all have. We may even have to have two Turkey scoreboards!

Just a few of the donated turkeys on the front doorstep.

We may need a bigger scoreboard next year.

I have included a few pictures of our Christmas decoration as we have been busy getting ready for the Holidays. I have lots more to get done before the big day which is closing in rapidly. Just remember, only 10 more sleeps everyone!!

The Christmas tree was almost finished.

This owl guards one of the crystal snowflakes.

CBC Turkey Drive

I’m still glowing with all the positive feedback from you, my readers, to last week’s post. So this week I’m going to tell you about another way to help others in your community.

Here on The Witch’s Island the local CBC station runs its “Turkey Drive” every year to help the food bank provide a turkey dinner for every family in need. We have been contributing to the drive for the last few years usually by dropping off a bird at one of their collection points. This year I’m doing something a little different.

I’ve been making the suggestion at work for a couple of years now that we should donate as a group and challenge other companies to do the same. They finally decided that they would go with the idea and set a first goal of 25 turkeys. Instead of bringing in an actual turkey it was determined that a donation of $25 would be enough to buy one. By the time I got upstairs to buy mine there had already been 8 people in ahead of me!

My turkey!

The girls in Human Resources did a great job in organizing the collection. They made up a “Turkey Scoreboard” to keep track of the number bought. Everyone who contributed got to select and sign a paper turkey on the board. By lunchtime they had revised their original goal of 25 to a total of 50 turkeys and by the end of my shift the turkeys were almost to the edge of the board. 75 turkeys donated in one day!

Turkey scoreboard.

This was, in no small part, the result of some good natured competition between the different departments in the plant. E-mails flowed back and forth between the departments and HR all day with challenges offered and met. It was a lot of fun!

The scoreboard with the revised goal.

At the same time as we were doing the turkey challenge we were also holding a bake sale and a Christmas ornament sale with all proceeds going to the same cause.

We also held a sale of Christmas ornaments.

The CBC will be in our city this Friday as part of their Turkey Drive and that is when my company will be presenting our contribution. With almost another week to collect donations who knows how much there will be. Anybody out want to try to beat us?