I am DONE Christmas shopping!

Seriously! I finished it all on Amazon.com last night. Two orders total and we're calling it complete. I even bought stocking stuffers at Amazon as well. Everything done! I am very happy to think I will not have to fight traffic for days on end as I try to cross town to get yet another present, or look at another store. None of that for me! I am done! Wooohooooo!

What else...that's about it I suppose. We're trying to get back into the swing of things around here since the flu took me out for a week. We're almost there. I still have one big box to sort and the kitchen might look like we live there once more. Right now it looks more like we store junk in there.

Our feast is coming up too soon. We do a feast based out of the old testament to celebrate what God has given us. My responsibilities are for appetizers, fish course, desserts, aperitifs, childcare and table setting. My husband does the other 4 courses. I think we will hire a high schooler to wash dishes for us during the dinner so we can keep up on things. That was a problem in years past. We needed multiple dishes for each course so we had to clean and re-use them. Not a problem per se, but it created a lot of chaos for us. I think if we just keep dishes washed we can stay on top of the kitchen and lower stress all around. We also will not be sitting with the guests this year. Instead we will be just serving and cooking. I think I have my plans to where I can have almost everything done in advance and I can just plate up my courses and serve and then keep attention to wine pouring and plate clearing.

My theme this year for the table is Christmas. Since we're doing the feast in December it shouldn't be hard to find things to dress the table with. Hopefully we can get up a Christmas tree as well and that would lend a nice ambiance to the room during dinner.

My plans for fish courses: Grilled shrimp with an orange sauce and East Coast crab cakes with herbed aioli. My appetizers are tentatively: Smoked salmon with a cream cheese on rye with olive tapenade and a baked phyllo/prosciutto asparagus stem with a peach-ginger daiquiri. That hits all the taste buds without wine (one guest is allergic).

What do you think?