Christmastime is Here

     That is what this week has been. Getting ready for Christmas. What with dealing with depression and grief, it took until about halfway through the month to even really get going on making people's gifts. (But I'd already bought the supplies, so I couldn't afford to do anything else.) Even then, I was struggling. But the Frankincense seems to still be working, so I was REALLY busy this week trying to finish making gifts. Getting down to the wire here, and I still have a LOT to do. I was quite proud of myself though, I still took time out to make stuff with Jessica. We cut out paper snowflakes on one day, and on another we made "borax snowflakes" (shown in the pictures)

So, you mix 1/3 cup borax into 1 pint of boiling water, and then suspend "snowflakes" in it. We bent pipe-cleaners into snowflake/flower-esque shapes, and hung them from popsicle sticks. Let it sit for about 8-12 hours, and crystals grow on the snowflakes.

Here you can kinda see the crystals that have grown around the pipe-cleaners as they are drying so we can hang them on our tree.

And here is Jessica getting ready to place her ornament on the tree. The homemade ornaments from this year (our borax snowflakes, some snowmen, and the paper snowflakes) are about the only thing on the tree right now, and at this point, other than our annual tradition ornaments, there won't be any others. Other things are too much more important.

     Unfortunately its been really hard to do stuff with Jessica because she's been acting up SO much this week. I seriously don't know what happened but I've been at wit's end with her for about 5 days now. I'm really hoping we can figure it out and fix it in the next day or so, or I'm going to feel like I am rewarding bad behavior when we do Christmas morning, but I'm not someone who can take away Christmas. So, we'll see what happens. I'm going to try cutting down her screen time, and see if that helps at all. 
Merry Christmas everyone.