Giveaway: $100 CVS/pharmacy Gift Card
Hanukah is over but I know for most of you, the holidays are just beginning. If you are a busy person (working, parenting, living, breathing), Christmas can tend to sneak up on you. Maybe you didn’t hear Jingle Bells start playing over the loudspeaker at the supermarket all the way back in October and it’s just dawning on you that you’ve got presents to buy, cards to send out and 5000 cookies to bake. It happens!
While I can’t snap my fingers and wrap all your presents, I can give a few last minute tips to solve common problems of holiday procrastinators.
12 Last minute Holiday Hacks:
1) You’re in charge of dessert for your sister’s holiday shindig and you don’t have the time to spend all day in your kitchen baking when you’ve still got presents to buy. Forget handmade. Buy store bought sweets and upgrade them with easy peasy fixings. You’ll get applauded for your creativity instead of your baking skillz, but that’s just as good!
2) You’ve spent all night wrapping gifts and have a few left when you run out of tape. You’ve already ransacked the drawers for packing or medical tape but still came up short. What to do? Find some stickers! If your house is anything like mine, you’ve got tons of them with a potty training chart somewhere.
3) If it’s wrapping that you ran out of, use old newspaper or magazines. If you haven’t bought a hard copy of a newspaper in ten years, you can even wrap gifts with a piece of fabric, a scarf or a tea towel.
4) You finally took a good picture for your holiday card but if you order online and wait for them to be delivered, it will be way past Christmas. To get everything out the door on time, order your cards online at CVS/pharmacy and they’ll be available for same day pick-up! CVS has hundreds of customized photo card templates to choose from and you can upload photos from your camera roll, your CVS photo account or straight from Facebook or Instagram. I ordered the cards below and they were ready for pick up in under two hours! Doesn’t get any faster than that.
5) Oh no! You just found out Aunt Sally is coming to your holiday gathering and you didn’t get her a present! What to do??? REGIFT. I’m sure someone has given you a pair of gloves or a festive mug or a box of pears within the last 24 hours that you can pawn off to the next lucky recipient. Whoever gave you those gloves was probably regifting them to begin with anyway.
6) If you forgot to buy gift tags, wrap each kid’s gifts with a different wrapping paper. That way little Timmy knows all the reindeer themed paper is his and little Judy knows the snowflakes are hers. Saves time on writing cards too.
7) If you’re afraid to break out the good glasses for your holiday party but still want to use something festive, check out this ridiculously simple Santa upgrade to plain old red SOLO cups.
8) If you are light on stocking stuffers, I suggest finding items right in your own house. Oranges make great stocking stuffers, as do new toothbrushes, character Band Aids and leftover Halloween candy.
9) If you forget to get gifts for your nieces and nephews, call your sister or brother before you make an emergency run to the mall. It’s very possible they forgot too. This year my sister and I made a last minute arrangement to exchange old toys instead of buying new ones. The kids really don’t know the difference and it saves time, money and most importantly— SPACE!
10) Did you run out of places to put the Elf? Try this one.
11) If you’ve got extended family coming over and realize you’ve got pics of one Grandma framed on the mantle and not the other, save face by buying same-day photo prints at CVS/pharmacy. Last thing you want is a family member to feel slighted for under representation in your home. You can print photos from their website or you can even do it on-the-go from the CVS/pharmacy mobile app while you’re picking up last minute rolls of toilet paper or something. Talk about multi-tasking!
12) If you don’t want to spend all day cooking a turkey, consider deep frying it. It takes about 45 minutes and it’s great entertainment. If you’re afraid you’ll burn the house down, I recommend ordering take-out Chinese. That’s what the Jews do!
GIVEAWAY: $100 CVS/pharmacy Gift Card
To enter to win a $100 CVS/pharmacy gift card, share a story of your biggest holiday fail below. Whether it was a dog who ate the tree or a forgotten gift, let me know in the comments below!
You must be a Mommy Shorts subscriber to enter and the winner will be announced on December 30th, 2015.
Winner update:
Congrats to Sydney H.! Please contact pam@mommyshorts.com to claim your prize.
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This post was sponsored by CVS, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Every year we do a gift draw with all the adults in our (large) family. We go nutso on getting all the kids presents, but have settled down on the adult gifting. I’m the one who always does the draw. For the most part it goes smoothly – I don’t mess it up. However, one year I did, and my younger brother did not get a gift. Somehow I assigned a person for him to gift, but no gift for him. He didn’t say a word. I didn’t find out until months later, when I felt SUPER guilty. And so I bought him a gift.
Now I check, and double check my lists!
We use drawnames.com, It’s is amazing! You enter everyone’s name and email address and once everyone in the group has joined. The site picks names for you. And you can make exclusions to so couples don’t pick each other if that’s what you want. Group members can make a idea list and you can ask your giftee questions anonymously. Check it out it’s really made things easier for us!
This sounds like an awesome website! Recommending it to my husband’s family!
The first Christmas after we had our oldest son, we had no presents to open on Christmas morning. We were so exhausted with a newborn that we just never got around to buying any gifts for each other or for him. It made for kind of a sad Christmas morning.
the same thing happened to us. i managed to get one book for our baby, but nothing else. my husband went grocery shopping christmas eve, and wrapped all the groceries and put them under the tree so we would have things to open christmas morning 🙂
I always bring two homemade pies to the large family Christmas party. Christmas 2012 was only 20 days after my preemie son came home from the NICU, so my mom offered to make the pies, but I said I would (I love making them!). Of course, I left it to the last minute because I was exhausted and frazzled, but I stayed up late and made them. They were perfect! And they sat perfectly, on my counter on Christmas day because I forgot to pack them. 🙁 I was so proud of actually getting them baked with a newborn in the house, but that was balanced out by forgetting to bring them to the party.
Our biggest holiday fail seemed to happen quite frequently growing up. My Mom always bought a ton of gift cards because with three teenage girls who never know what they want, what’s better? Anyways it seems like every year at least one of the gift cards would either get thrown out with the wrapping paper and we would be dumpster diving to find it or my Mom would forget to check one of the million trees in her house that she puts presents under and a gift card would always get lost. Since they always did things evenly it was always a big deal when one of us got something that the other didn’t!
Our real Christmas tree, dripping with ornaments that had been carefully collected my entire life, fell over while my husband was away on business, and I was home alone with our screaming (teething) 5 month old (first time parent). I tried and tried, but could not lift the tree back up. I don’t have family in town, it seemed too late at night to call any friends to drive across town to help, and I barely knew the neighbors. But, I decided to be brave and knocked on the neighbors’ door past 10 pm, and they came over in their PJs to help not just lift the tree back up, but clean up and salvage the ornaments that were everywhere, and our families became friendly after that night!! I have some of the shattered ornaments that I still hang up every year as a reminder that good memories can come from seeming disasters! [And we now tie the tree to something stable so this will never, ever happen again!]
My now Sister-In-Law was coming over for Christmas Eve long ago when dating my brother, we had a very aggressive male dog who did not like new people. She made it through Christmas Eve dinner and as she was leaving she bent down to kiss my mother on the cheek and my dog bit her on her “cheek”. Lucky he did not break the skin but she had a black and blue for over a week or so she “claims”.
They have been together for over 20 years now and she even came back the next day!
Biggest holiday fail was this Hanukkah. My oldest is finally old enough and aware of the holiday and we had the mensch on a bench so we created fictional Hanukkah fairies that our mensch reports to and who send gifts.
Well stupid me left the wrapped presents in a corner next to my bed and he actually (after never going there) went to that spot and saw a huge pile of gifts for him and his baby brother. Sigh. This is why we need a bigger house with more storage!!!
When I initially met my now-husband’s family, we had a conversation about name misspellings (because he’s a Gerry-with-a-G and I’m a Robyn-with-a-Y). My future BIL then introduced himself as Greg-with-two-Gs, so when I drew his name for the holiday gift exchange a few months later I addressed his gift to “Gregg,” because I’m an idiot. Nothing makes you feel like part of the family faster than being the butt of a joke that gets brought up EVERY YEAR FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.
So funny! I totally thought Gregg at first, too. 🙂
My biggest holiday fail had to be when I was married to my first husband, who was a first-generation American of Asian descent. I made a traditional turkey dinner and we had his parents over. I noticed his mother eating most of the side dishes, but purposefully avoiding the turkey. When I asked her if she didn’t like it, she quietly replied that in her country these birds were kept as pets because of their beautiful feathers. After a few more questions and a lot of translating, we figured it out. She thought I was serving peacock!
My husband’s family is huge so we used to do the name draw gift exchange. It eventually stopped because the last year it was just my husband and I along with his sister and her husband. Didn’t make it very excited.
My husband’s extended family gets together for a Christmas celebration every year and there are always gifts for the children to open. I never really paid attention to where those gifts came from. Until last year, when we brought our 3 month old (our first child) to the party. Everyone with kids had gifts for him. And that’s when I found out that the rule of the party is, if you have a kid, you bring gifts for all the kids. My husband knew and failed to tell me. So we had no gifts for any of his cousins’ kids, and I felt like a total grinch. Um, communication skills?
Another trick: if you are out of gift wrap, you can print your own gift wrap here: http://gift-wrapit.com/ (also, much prettier than the New York Times!)
I completely forgot about the cookies in the oven right before our Christmas party and they burnt to a crisp. Luckily, there were plenty other desserts to eat because they were not salvageable.
Technically it was right after Thanksgiving. We had done the driving all over to see family on the actual day, but we had a turkey of our own in the freezer, and since we didn’t get any leftovers we (ok, this is really probably all on me) thought it would be nice if we had our own Just-Us turkey dinner. Had the turkey thawing in the fridge for the recommended amount of time. Hubby was due home around 6 or so. Looking at the cooking times on the bird I had decided I didn’t have to start the turkey until a little after lunch. Which would have been perfect, except that the bird was still partially frozen when I took it out. I was given advice of just letting it soak in cold water for a bit, and no worries dinner didn’t have to be ready as soon as he walked in….. Well 3+ hours and several thawing methods later I was able to put the bird in the oven. We didn’t have dinner until 11 pm and I was ready to cry.
“Don’t worry about my Dad’s gift” says my husband. “I’ve got it covered” says my husband. “I’m getting him a book and a hat” says my husband. “Are you sure I can’t help” I ask. “Nope. Let me handle this one” he says.
So I buy everyone else’s gifts. I even got a nice gift for his cousin even though we’ve never exchanged gifts with him in the past. It was a perfect gift for him. As a car enthusiast who spends hours taking care of his cars, I got him a big bucket and filled it with lots of great car polishes, wipes, air fresheners, etc. I couldn’t wait to give it to him because it was so personalized and I knew he would appreciate that I paid attention to his interests.
An hour before everyone arrived at our house to celebrate, my husband said “Crap! I haven’t ordered that gift for my Dad yet.” He didn’t say, man it hasn’t arrived yet and we’ll have to give it to him the day after Christmas. No, he said he hadn’t ORDERED it yet. Great. Just great.
So…guess what he gave his Dad. The perfect gift for my husband’s cousin. My husband convinced himself that his Dad would love it and that we didn’t need to get a gift for his cousin anyway. Big fail.
My biggest holiday fail was when we told my mother in law that we’d be having Christmas at our house now that our first child (at the time only child) was getting old enough to “get it”. We wanted to have Santa come to our house. We had always gone to her house so she did not take it well. She told my husband-“why don’t you just stick a knife in my heart?!” And ran off crying. Merry Christmas!!!
I once made a beautiful salad, with tons of yummy stuff like sunflower seeds, mandarin oranges, spinach… right as we got on the expressway on our way to my dad’s I realized I left the bowl on top of the car. The on ramp looked very colorful. ????
My mom made a huge deal out of the fact that I wanted my kids to open their presents at my house Christmas morning and that we wouldn’t be over until around 9 or 10. She was very upset so I told her she was more than welcome to come and watch the chaos of the opening and that I would hold them from opening until 7:00. Sooo….Christmas morning comes, the kids run down the stairs, I put the cinnamon rolls in the oven and we pass out gifts, and start opening at 6:30. Crapppppppppppp. In walks mom, and it did not end well 🙁
I misplace at least one gift every. single. year.
Every year we put my grandmas famous sugar cookies and peanut butter cookies in the teddy bear cookie jar. Well, no one informed be that we decided to start putting the dog treats in that cookie jar. So for Christmas I had no idea and put that cookie jar out! Everyone was asking why the cookies tasted off this year… Come to realize everyone was eating dog treats ! Hahah! Whoops!
My husband and I’s first Christmas as a married couple and we were stuck 2,100 miles from home (Air Force). We decided to do all of our shopping on Amazon since it’s easier and quick shipping. We each took turns ordering separately so neither would find out what we were buying for the other. Well… we share one Amazon account and everything showed up in brown boxes, all under my name so we had no way of telling which box was for who. Nothing like opening a box Christmas morning and going “Oh wait, this is for you, here!”
The first Christmas after my husband and I got married, we were so excited to celebrate as a couple in our first place. We went out and cut down an overpriced tree, and brought it back to decorate in the perfect (read: only) spot in our tiny apartment. Unfortunately, that spot was a corner where the baseboard heaters met, and no matter how much we watered the tree, it constantly lost its needles. If we sat in a quiet room, we could actually hear the needles dropping off! By Christmas day, the bottom foot of the tree was completely bare…and no matter how much we vacuumed, we couldn’t get all of the needles out of the carpet! No one walked barefoot in that corner of the apartment the rest of the time we lived there.
One of my biggest holiday fails was when I first hosted Christmas dinner and my new in-laws attended. I was so frazzled and overwhelmed with stress that I got so behind on everything – cleaning, food shopping, cooking and wrapping presents. We kept moving the time they should arrive later. I was so behind that even after they arrived, I had them waiting for an hour for dinner to be served! They were all very kind and patient as they filled up on appetizers and booze :).
My biggest holiday fail was when I was a vegetarian, and not long after becoming a newly wed, I was having a holiday dinner. We had crates for dining chairs and a telephone spool table. I thought everything came out great – bean soup, salad, homemade flat bread and honey cakes, and more, but they are still talking about how awful everything was! There wasn’t much of a place to sit, or much to do. I guess I had a lot to learn about being a hostess!
The first year I spent with my husband and his dog I was really into edible gifts. A lot of people in my life really didn’t need anything so I picked gourmet items that I thought would match their taste and tried to make as many as possible for a home made touch. I was not yet real familiar with my future husband’s dog and her uncanny ability to sense the presence of food. Needless to say, I lost a number of gifts and had to run out to the store on christmas eve for alternatives.
Please don’t tell my husband I’m sharing this story. Before kids my husband and I lived in a tiny studio apartment right down the street from our favorite bar. The night before Christmas Eve we had a fun time at the bar. When we came home I went to sleep but my husband stayed up and fell asleep (passed out) on the couch. My husband has the unfortunate habit of sleep walking after he’s been drinking and peeing in weird places. Christmas Eve day arrives (the day we spend with my side of the family) and I begin to pack up the presents from under the Christmas tree. Some of the presents were wet and as I asked him why we both froze and looked at each other before I burst into tears. He peed on the Christmas tree!!! I stormed off while he salvaged the presents. Luckily the only one that really got “hit” was a chew toy for my parents’ dog. Not surprisingly that was her favorite toy for years to come.
ive never gotten Christmas cards out on time. I normally send New Years cards out- but this year I’m not even doing that. I just sent out save the dates for our upcoming wedding so I figure everyone got a nice picture of us anyways. 🙂
The biggest holiday fail on my part is not handing out Christmas Cards to my co-workers. I get a pile of them in my mailbox at work and I’m basically the only person who doesn’t give them. Oh well, maybe someday ????
Great ideas!!!
I re-gifted a beautiful cashmere baby blanket to a friend on Christmas. I didn’t realize this (because I never opened it), but the blanket was embroidered with my kids name, date of birth, and weight. opps.
Not only did I completely drop the ball on sending holiday cards this year, but I just found a card w a gift card in it, from last year, that was meant for my in laws from my mom. Woopps. Didn’t even think about CVS for cards, thanks!!
I knew we would be moving close to the holidays, so I started my shopping for all the kids in October. Not only do I keep forgetting things I purchased for my own kids, but I ran out of time to wrap and space to pack all the other presents. So everyone will be getting New Years presents this year!
A few years ago, I spent Christmas Eve enjoying time with family at my cousin’s house. Her two dogs and four cats, along with her mother-in-law’s dog and sister-in-law’s dog made for a very furry house. I didn’t want to leave early just because my allergies were acting up, so I stuck it out for hours past when I should have left. Cut to a few hours later, trying to sleep at home, and asthma inhalers just aren’t working anymore. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I drove myself to the Emergency Room. Luckily they weren’t too busy and were soon able to help me breathe a little bit easier.
I had asthma as a child, but have not had an attack in years. Hubby LOVES the smell of live Christmas trees. This year, when I pulled out our artificial prelit tree, half the lights were out. I told hubby he could get a live tree this year. We went out and let the boys pick one out, brought it home, I promptly had a ridiculous allergic reaction and asthma attack complete with sneezing, coughing, wheezing, the works.
So far as an adult I’ve avoided any major fails. But as a tween I had a pretty major fail. I really wanted a lava lamp for Christmas, and I had a particular one in mind with colored water. My wonderful Aunt & Uncle got me a lava lamp, but (gasp) it had clear water with colored lava. Rather than being grateful for the gift I sat and sulked about how it was “all wrong”. I am still embarrassed about it 20 years later.
Our first Christmas as newlyweds in our new town, my in laws celebrated with us. They are fairly religious Protestants while I grew up Catholic. My husband and I hadn’t chosen a church yet, so Christmas Eve we took his family with us to midnight mass at the Catholic Church. It ended up being an all Spanish mass, and his family doesn’t speak Spanish. We couldn’t sing any of the hymns or understand the sermon. It turns out the English speakers attend the 6pm mass. I felt like I ruined their Christmas!
We moved a few weeks before Christmas 3 years ago. Santa came to our new house on the 28th…
Some of these stories are so funny but must have felt horrible at the time I can’t even bring myself to post/complain about my silly burned side dish or mixing up the kids gifts. Hope everyone has the perfect Christmas this year.
Not sure if this is a total fail, but I have a fond memory of a Santa gift when I was young- my parents opened the box for a super nice fisher price tool bench on Christmas Eve only to find to their dismay, that the plastic was completely shattered on one side! Since it was Christmas Eve (after a glass or two of spiked eggnog, I’m sure!) before this was discovered, they just had to put the tool bench by the tree and hope for the best. My brothers and I came downstairs on Christmas morning and somehow it was determined that Santa must have accidentally dropped the tool bench on his way down the chimney, thus breaking it. My parents assured us that Santa had called the toy store and arranged for a replacement. Amazing how easy to convince all four of us that ‘Santa’ had failed- but also that the tool bench from the North Pole could be replaced at our local toy store! Ha! Happy holidays!
biggest holiday fail =
My mom put cinnamon on deviled eggs instead of paprika one year right after my parents got married. My grandpa and dad ate them all anyway so she didn’t feel bad.
Our wedding present from my parents was a set of beautiful hand painted ornaments, each with a different image of a Boston landmark. I happily hung our new treasures on our tree for our first married Christmas. Early the next morning, we heard a crash and ran out to our living room to find that our tree had tipped over, smashing 95% of our wedding gift ornaments into little tiny shards of glass.
One fail I seem to do every year is hiding gifts and forgetting all my hiding places. I have found a missing gift 6 months after Christmas.
One year when I was about 8 and my sister was 4, my sister decided to open ALL of the presents under the tree. I tried to stop her and explain that not all the gifts were hers. Didn’t work. My mother was crushed. My mother spent the rest of the morning trying to tape the gifts back together.
My cousin managed to jam the wooden spoon into the blender blades while making the “cranberry sauce” pretty much yearly. And my grandpa liked to make her feel better by saying pretty much every year “everybody likes a little roughage” or “it’s like a built in toothpick” ????
I also almost burned the house down lighting candles one time while my dad was out. I dropped a match onto the tissue box and they went up like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We had cement floors thankfully and I threw them down and stomped on them and then cried because I knew I was in deep trouble. There was a strict no candles for Tannith rule without adult supervision.
A couple years back, I bought a live Christmas tree and we put it up the day after Thanksgiving. The tree turned completely brown and was dead by Christmas. A total fire hazard. Our families come to our home to celebrate too. It was both funny and depressing, especially when ornaments would just intermittently fall off.
We draw names for stockings several months before Christmas and I somehow got mixed up with who I was buying for. And… got it completely wrong! My brother in law ended up with two stuffed stockings and my sister, none. Stocking fail!
Three Christmases ago my mother finally got her wish and had all of her kids and grandbabies with her for the holiday. Everything was perfect, tree was gorgeous, decorations all around and the stockings hung with care over the fireplace. Turns out not so carefully hung. Halfway through the night my oldest comes down the stairs and yells very calmly “the stockings are on fire.” Well they were a little more than on fire and we had to call the fire department. Good news all was saved, very little fire damage and we got to watch some very hot firemen traipse through our Christmas. That will forever be called our Smoking Hot Christmas! Since then she’s managed to light something on fire every other holiday…… We’re getting her flameless candles this year.
We arrived early for Christmas morning Mass, anticipating a huge crowd. There was no crowd, so we went to the church playground with our toddler. Who always saved pooping for outside time. While I had packed diapers, I had not packed wipes. So right when everyone is arriving at church and doing pre-service potty breaks, I’m locked in the bathroom trying to clean a poop-splosion with damp toilet paper and paper towels. It got on socks and shoes, so I had to trash the socks and clean the shoes. Meanwhile the line outside was growing longer, and my husband kept knocking in the door, telling me to hurry it up already.
The first thing that came to mind was when I found out I was pregnant with my first child the week before Christmas. We were excited, but didn’t want to share the news for a few weeks. For Christmas, we went to stay with my in-laws, and at some point, one of my toddler nephews must have been digging in our bags, because he came into the living room shaking a big bottle of prenatal vitamins. My MIL took them from him, read the bottle, and demanded to know who in the house was pregnant. Whoops! I had to ‘fess up.
There was also the year that my sister and her family weren’t going to be able to come to exchange gifts until New Years. I decided to take advantage of post-holiday sales, and was going to buy their presents the week after Christmas. Great plan until- surprise!- she showed up at 10am on Christmas morning, bearing gifts for all of my children, and I didn’t have anything for hers. ????
I have a tie for 2: One year, I printed and stamped Christmas cards, but never ever got around to sending them. I think I finally threw them away in July 2 years later lol. Now I use http://www.cardstore.com which prints, stuff, addresses, and mails my cards for me. (Always take advantage of the black friday sale)
My husband and I’s first Christmas we agreed not to exchange big gifts because we had just gotten married and were broke. The week before Christmas I convinced him to buy a puppy for $450 as our gift to each other. Come to find out Christmas morning, he had bought really nice bedroom furniture for us, so we completely blew our budget lol.
I haven’t had any adult holiday fails yet but when I was young we were headed to my Grandpa’s for our Christmas get-together. My mom had baked an apple pie and placed it in the floorboard of the back seat (I don’t know why that was the best place for it). She told me to watch out for it but of course I didn’t see it until after my foot was in it. I left a perfect foot print right in the middle and the family got quite a laugh out of it.
My holiday fail was when I dropped already roasted turkey on the floor. We had to order pizza.
Christmas morning. We were getting ready to leave for the day. I thought i would be smart and get my son(18 months) ready and leave him in the living room with dad to play while I got ready myself. so i got him dressed and left him in the living room. when I was almost ready Daddy went outside to warm up the car. in the thirty seconds that we had our eyes off of him he walked into the bathroom opened the toilet and climbed into it. We found him soaking wet from the waist down. shoes socks and pants. No back of outfit and we were supposed to be at breakfast in a half an hour. I put his clothes in the wash and put his xmas jammies back on and took him to breakfast. When we got there everyone was curious of his outfit I explained and they ALL laughed and he had breakfast in his jammies.
Once I thought to make homemade marmalade as a gift that I could afford to give everyone as a very young adult and recently newlywed. I made it 2 days before Christmas so it would be fresh and wonderful. I worked on it very hard and spent my last dime on it. When I was finished I was horrified to find out it tasted horrible and bitter. I had no choice but to gift it anyways. I earned a reputation that year as a bad cook with the in laws.
My biggest holiday fail was forgotten gifts. It was very embarrassing I have to admit.
My holiday fail was not realized until we were putting out decorations this year. Last year I filled my husband and I’s stocking with plastic bags to appear that Santa filled our stockings. . . . apparently someone peaked.
When we pulled out the stockings this year, our son says ” Remember when Santa only brought you plastic bags?! . . . Why did he do that?!?!?”
Uhmmm . . . we were bad?
LOVE your blog!
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i dropped the turkey, it literally slipped out of the casserole dish i was baking it in and slid onto the floor – shattering the dish and we still ate that turkey…… I am reminded of this year after year to not drop the turkey :T
My mother tried to make my Mamaw’s dressing (since she’s no longer with us). Mother swears she followed it to a T, but it was so hard you could throw it like a football.
One year I had to get my wisdom teeth taken out right before Christmas and everyone had to alter all of our food traditions so that I would be able to eat…. Food is my life!!!
I wanted to host thanksgiving dinner for the first year. I was convinced that I would cook the entire meal myself. Biggest fail of the night, the turkey was undercooked!! Almost raw! Had to make chicken nuggets for everyone. Thankfully everyone understood.
This is the first year we have a child and we wanted to send out holiday cards to friend and family of our little girl. We spent about two weeks going through various photos and finding the right layout for our holiday card. We realized after we placed the order that our holiday cards will be available for pick up on 12/23. So much for getting the cards out before the holidays.
my biggest fail was making an apple pie but forgetting to put sugar in the filling, it wasn’t very good and it was the only dessert we had that year.
We are Jewish and our 3 1/2 yr old daughter goes to a Jewish preschool. Only about 30% of the kids there are actually Jewish so there has been a fair amount of talk about Santa. We explained that Santa is a character who makes Christmas exciting for the kids who celebrate it. At the Hanukkah performance, our girl told her class that Santa is pretend like a super hero. here’s to hoping the kids who believe do so fiercely so their parents don’t have to do too much explaining. Sorry everyone!
When I was a kid, I got a toy husky dog that you could harness to a sleigh. The harness was the perfect size for the cat! The cat was not thrilled that there was a sleigh “chasing” her and she ran behind the tree and practically up the wall at top speed and knocked over the tree. Woops!
On Christmas morning we always drive out to my Grandmas to see our extended family! There are always Christmas gift for the great grandchildren. We drove all of the way there, popped open the trunk only to find out that there was a miscommunication about WHO exactly was supposed to load the presents into the car..
My biggest holiday fail: my daycare asks parents to give cash bonuses for teachers instead of gifts. Last year, I didn’t budget well & ended up skipping holiday bonuses for the daycare teachers. I still feel like an asshole over this.
Addressing all my xmas cards personally but mailing them to the wrong people!! I somehow mixed some of them up! ACK!
ran out of wrapping paper and boxes on Christmas eve and it was too late to go get anything, so we put the dress in a ziploc bag and drew Christmas trees on it and put a bow on it. Embarassing, but funny. Thankfully, she is only 6, so she did not care. Plus, it was easy to open.
Our biggest holiday fail was post Christmas day letting our 3 year old daughter unknowingly retrieve a PERMENANT BLACK MARKER that she went to town on all of her new toys- not leaving out her bedroom closet walls either. Still trying to figure out how to get it all out- UGH!
When making cookies a big bag of flour and sugar got knocked over to the floor and wouldn’t have been to bad, but our three dogs went running through the spill. Not sure if it’s a fail but did take a while to sweep it up and de-flour/sugar the dogs.
Not really a huge fail but when my daughter was just a couple months old she fell asleep on my dad (who is well known to not be a baby person). It was really cute until she slept for 4 hours! He was afraid to move and when she finally woke up she had peed threw her diaper all over him!