Christmas comes early 2020

In her last blog my friend and distant neighbour Deb from Kastle's Journey posted about filling their home with Christmas cheer early because-- well, it's 2020 and we all need a little extra cheer this year. This post inspired me to do ours as well.. traditionally, I put up Xmas on Dec 1st every year but I think Deb is absolutely right - we all need a little extra cheer this year.

Having moved to this house from living in our RV for 2.5 years, because I made the decorations last year, we needed some stuff so off to Canadian Tire we went and I bought a bunch of decorations and because we had tied the shopping to Brad's massage, I was doing it on Black Friday.... yup, that Friday. I managed -- but someone almost lost a kneecap... ;)

This is the tree we picked up for $10 off of the exchange on Salt Spring Island 1.5 years ago, we used it outdoors last Christmas as you may recall... so it needed a good wash first off. Then a good shake and finally left to drip dry in the corner with the fire on to dry it out. Once dry, I set to work putting it together... turns out, we didn't need more stuff after all and now I have to take some back. I did use the tinsel and garland and I am keeping the nutcrackers and acorns for product pictures but the massive box of ornaments I spent $80 on is going back next massage day (Monday)...

Having purchased a 200 light string to run along the pathway outside I noticed as I was setting them out that they were indoor... yup, it was black friday alright... so crazy I bought the wrong lights, so I strung them up around the windows instead. I think it looks pretty good but this picture doesn't really do it justice.

Back to normal life now:

Pickled beet challenge

I am in the process of making a deal with a local woman famous for her pickled beets to use her product for selling freeze dried, I put her quart of beets on 1 tray and mine on another ( I only processed the one but made 2 several weeks ago). I must say I much prefer the flavour of mine but we shall see what they taste like once they are processed in betty as that can make a big difference.

I am making pictures to use for my online store.

I have submitted the paperwork for the local online shopping store but have yet to hear anything back. I will finish setting up my etsy store in the meantime because as we all know bureaucracy rushes for no one.

I have a decent amount of the candied items prepared now and have begun the vegetables and fruits. I now have 3 different size bags: Small for the Unicorn Poop, Large for Asparagus and Astronaut Ice Cream Bars and Medium for everything else. Naturally, I will have a large option for fruits and veg as well.