Oh the joy of being a daughter, sister, wife and mother during the holidays

Oh how I do not look forward to this time of the year. I am one of those people that don't believe in Christmas until after Thanksgiving. Now that we live away from both my family and my in-laws I look forward less and less to the holiday season. I am almost to the point where I push getting ready for Halloween until the very last because I know once Halloween there is no putting off planning for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I love Thanksgiving and Christmas. I just really hate all the stress that comes along with these two holidays for me. Why is it that two of the most family oriented Holiday have to happen just weeks apart? This year there is just shy of 4 weeks between the two.
Growing up we spent every single Thanksgiving and Christmas at my grandma's house until I was seventeen or eighteen. It kind of surprised me when a couple years ago I decided that we were staying home for Christmas. The biggest obstacle was alternating which family we were spending Christmas Eve, and morning with. I wonder if my parents ever wanted to just stay home for Christmas all those years that they packed up all of us kids and presents. I treasure the memories from those years so I am grateful they didn't.
So the other issue with this time of year. The guilt. I feel guilty not giving my kids the memories of spending Christmas our extended family. I know this is kind of silly, but it is the truth. I also know that we are making memories as well.
Even though I do have the guilt, I also know that I made the right decision for me. It has taken me a VERY LONG time to realize that I can do things differently. And as hard as it is, I have also learned that I can say no. There is only so much that I have to give and my 3 boys and husband deserve to have me at my best. Well the best that I can be at the moment anyway. I will be the first to say that I am far from perfect. Really far from being perfect.
I don't even know if this post makes any sense. As I am rereading it seems like I am rambling.
I just decided I am going to keep my eye set on the end of this year. There is only 42 days left. I can do 42 days. Once January is here I don't have to worry about Thanksgiving and Christmas for another 10 months! Oh how wonderful it sounds.

Dark Brown Sugar

A few years ago I mistakenly bought a couple bags of dark brown sugar. I turned them into caramel popcorn. I was hooked.
Sometime later I was watching this cooking show and they were explaining how to make the best chocolate chip cookies. They said to use dark brown sugar. When I make these cookies I get TONS of compliments.
Tonight I wanted to make to make a caramel popcorn. Normally I like gooey caramel popcorn, but tonight I was going for crunchy. I don't have a recipe that I like for a crunchy caramel popcorn so I did a quick search. The first one I pulled up said to use microwave popcorn and then to keep the popcorn warm in the oven. There is probably a reason for this, but it just seemed like more then I wanted to do. So I scroll down and see a recipe for Salted Caramel Popcorn. The recipe is simple and it is salty caramel so of course I had to try it.
I would post a link to the original recipe, but I kind of butchered it. I ended up putting 2 c. dark brown sugar instead of 1 cup light brown sugar. If that wasn't enough I put a full cup of corn syrup instead of only 1/3. I had the syrup, sugar and butter (1 cup) on the stove on low because my sugar was hard as a rock and so almost forgot the salt. It was suppose to have 1 teaspoon, I did closer to 2. Luckily it turned out. The caramel was perfect.

The other thing that dark brown sugar does is give your finished product a darker brown color. e original plan was to add candy corn and chocolate candies, but it is way to good to do that!