Planning a Deep South Christmas

Oh my goodness, I can't believe the holidays are 2 months away. What the heck happened? We've been so busy getting ready to roll out new upgrades at Planet Purl and working on the book, the year has just flown by.

In addition to being addicted to knitting, I will admit to two other addictions -- Peeps and Chrsitmas. Now that you can get tree-shaped Peeps at Christmas time, the period from November 1- December 31st is absolutely my favorite time of year. I put up 11 Christmas trees every year, all themed. Every surface of my house is covered in Christmas -- tables, windowsills, chandeliers, dressers, hutches. If it has a horizontal surface, it is adorned with Christmas. It would take me a good solid week of 12 hour work days to get it all up. I've already started on the upstairs and it's not even Halloween. I even have a photo album showing me pictures of where eveything goes. Crazy, huh? We had to have these big hanging platforms installed in our garage ceiling to help store all of my Christmas stuff.

My extended family gathers at my house every year the weekend before Christmas for holiday dinner and gift exchange. And because I just can't do anything half-way, I always do a theme dinner. We've had "Colonial Williamsburg Christmas," "Christmas in Germany," "Christmas in France," "Christmas in Italy," and the list goes on. So this year's theme, in honor of our upcoming book, is "A Deep South Christmas." The plan is to have a dessert buffet with every single dessert that will be in the book. Southern Comfort Pralines, Caramel Covered Divinity, Red Velvet Cake, Chocolate Toffee Pecan Pie, Peach Cobbler, Bananas Foster Bread Pudding with Hot Caramel Pecan Sauce and Vanilla Custard, Beignets, and Sweet Potato Pie. We're going to have lots of leftovers, so maybe you should come over for coffee and dessert after the family's gone home?