Monday, December 1, 2008

Do you know all the words?


Years ago, when I was still a Stanley, we delivered 12 days of Christmas to people in the ward, or maybe we just talked about it. Nevertheless, this idea of delivering something small but wonderful to someone's house for the 12 days leading up to Christmas has seemed magical to me and I plan to do it almost every year.

I have a hard time with two parts of this project. First, coming up with all the stuff. I've tried to follow the lyrics of the song closely with ornaments or something like that I've tried follow the numbers and I have tried meals that didn't really follow the song at all, but was needed. It just wasn't what I wanted it to be. Second, I seem to lose steam about halfway through. Getting something together and delivering it everynight get to be more than I bargeined for. I am very afraid to report that I have delivered 7 days of Christmas more than once.

This year we are doing the 12 days of Christmas (again) for some ladies who are without family closeby. We are almost done putting it all together. We will deliver a basket to each, full of 12 pretty, happy things for them to open. (Sara's idea to deliver it all at once) This fixes the "7 days" of Christmas problem.

And starting in October (and bugging Sara and Robin until they were sick of it) I put together a really cute and simple list that I am really excited about. Here it is. I am only using one idea for each day.
1st A partridge in a pear tree (1 beautiful pear, Jones soda has pear tree flavor)

2nd Two Turtle Doves (2 choc turtles, Dove candies)

3rd Three French Hens (French ribbon, Mc Donald's gift cirt, French milled soap)

4th Four Calling Birds (Christmas Cards , pine cone birdfeeders)

5th Five Golden Rings (can of pineapple rings)

6th Six Geese a Laying (breakfast cookbook, gift cirt. for a restaurant or a quiche)

7th Seven Swans a Swimming (bubble bath)

8th Eight Maids a Milking (hot cocoa, mugs)

9th Nine Ladies Dancing (DVD ~a musical, pedicure set or mani-pedi gift cirt.)

10th Ten Lords a Leaping (toasty socks, slippers)

11th Eleven Pipers Piping (bag of Bugles, ornament)

12th Twelve Drummers Drumming (Christmas CD)


If you have any other ideas, please comment so I can add them to my list.


This is my list for single ladies, I have another for young families.

4 comments:

Salem said...

We did the same thing a few years ago. The most clever were:

three french hens: write "ooh la la" on a can of chicken soup

five golden rings: glazed doughnuts

12 drummers: there were some kids, so we did 12 "drums" of play-do.

Tricia said...

We had this done to us several years ago and have since enjoyed choosing 2-3 families each year to deliver to. We especially like doing this annonomously. Our favorite families are the "empty nesters" whose kids and grandkids live far away.

We did ring pops for the golden rings... whistle pops for the pipers piping...drumstick's for the drummers drumming...

R-Eight said...

Great! I will add these ideas to my list. Thanks Sae and Trish!

Mindi said...

love it--i think you have got it down.

why don't i live in texas so i can be the happy recipient?