MANGLED CLUMPS OF YARN

“And why again did you think this was good idea?” DaeRi asked Tamarai one afternoon. They were sitting in Tamarai’s living room attempting to finish the mittens they started to knit back at the start of December.

“Everyone loves handmade gifts,” Tamarai said, even though her face was wrinkled in confusion as she looked at the things that were supposed to be mitten in her hands. That was Tamarai’s reasoning back at the start of the month when she convinced Daeri to join her in knitting these stupid mittens, DaeRi wished she hadn’t fell for it. Now she had to find a way to save these mangled clumps of yarn and get them to at least be usable as mittens.

“We could have bought some and lied,” DaeRi said.

Tamarai shot her a look, “no way, that would be horrible.”

Daeri sighed and picked back up her someday gonna be mittens. she didn’t know how that was gonna happen, there were only six more days until Christmas, and they wouldn’t be able to work on them on Christmas Eve because of the Annual Brown family christmas Extravaganza. So they only really had five days. And after you factor into the equation that AeGuk was coming home tomorrow and DaeRi’s mom wanted DaeRi home to welcome him and on Saturday they were going Christmas shopping together there was only really three days. Three days to make these jumbled piles of yarn into mittens.

It didn’t look like it was gonna happen.

“Nobody’s gonna want these,” DaeRi said.

“It’s the thought that counts,” Tamarai insisted.

DaeRi shook her hand, “AeGuk is not gonna want some mangled clumps of yarn.”

“He’s your brother, he’ll like anything,” Tamarai said.

Daeri laughed, “yeah right, he’s too practical. He only likes things he can actually use.”

“He can use mittens,” Tamarai said.

“Not these ones,” DaeRi said, “I should just go and buy him some, I don’t have to lie about it.”

Tamarai shook her head, “Just keep trying, we can’t give up!”

DaeRi groaned but continued to try to salvage the mittens. She wrestled with the yarn for another thirty minutes until she finally threw the clumps onto the table in frustration.

“My fingers are so cramped,” she complained, showing Tamarai her hands and exaggerating how cramped they were, “I can’t even move them anymore.”

Tamarai frowned but held up her own cramped hands and nodded.

“Okay, we can take stop for the day,“ Tamarai said, putting down her own kind of mittens.

“Or forever,” DaeRi said.

Tamarai laughed, “just for today.”

Daeri laughed too, but because there was no way she was ever gonna pick up that bundle of torture even again. She was already planning to stop by this cozy store next to the deli after school tomorrow to pick up a new pair for AeGuk, he’ll appreciate them a whole lot more.

But she let Tamarai think she was laughing for the same reason as her. What she doesn’t know doesn’t hurt.

COOKIE CRUSH

The track team was having Secret Santa, with only one rule and that was that everything had to be handmade.

Layla wasn’t really a sports person but at the start of the year Lexi convinced her to try out for the track team for some miraculous reason she got in.

Now Layla had to make something for Kyle Parkinson, the tallest and fastest girl on the team. Layla wasn’t a person with many talents and was stumped on what she could make that would be good enough for Kyle.

Lexi was making a collage of running pics of Leslie, her secret santa receiver. Layla admitted that was a pretty good idea, but she didn’t want to copy Lexi so she had to think of something original.

The Saturday before the Track team’s party Layla still had nothing and was totally stumped, finally she realized she just needed to make something, anything.

And that anything was cookies.

She had been trying so hard to not fall for the cheap and easy cookies, but she had no choice. She just hoped that Kyle liked cookies and wasn’t on some super strict diet or something.

So Layla got out the flour, sugar, butter, and eggs and searched up a recipe on her iPhone. “Perfect Roll Out Sugar Cookies!” the title of the recipe claimed, Layla chose to believe it and started with the baking.

She was grateful that her mom had bought a bowl mixer for an”early Christmas present” to herself. She put in the butter and sugar and let it cream as the recipe told her too. After that went in the eggs and vanilla, the vanilla she almost couldn’t find. Layla didn’t cook, her mom didn’t cook much either. Her dad was the king of the kitchen, and he had a very interesting order to everything.

Which explained why it took Layla a whole ten minutes to find the Vanilla sitting with the canned vegetable. That just didn't make any sense.

After the eggs and the vanilla she put in the flour and baking powder, thankfully that was located right with the flour and that made real sense. Then the recipe called for the dough to be chilled so she wrapped it up in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for twenty minutes.

While it was in the fridge she played some Candy Crush and ended up spending more than twenty minutes playing. She could go on forever on that game.

Finally she tore herself away from the game and got out the dough, but now it was too hard and when she tried to roll it out on her, heavily floured, counter it just kind of fell apart.

“Ugh,” she mumbled to herself. she was smart enough to know that throwing it in the microwave was a stupid idea, instead she kneaded it with her hands for a minute or two and finally she could roll it out into one piece.

Than she simply cut it into circles, as that was the only cookie cutter she could find, popped them onto a cookie sheet and put it in the oven for 7 minutes.

She was also smart enough not to get back Candy crush for that next seven minutes, instead she posted an Instagram picture of the floury mess on the counter and captioned it with “making cookies for the first time #wishmeluck”.

Seven minutes is really short and in no time the cookies were out and miraculously looked beautiful. She took a quick picture and posted to Instagram “i should do this more often #strokeofluck”.

She just hoped that Kyle would like them, but hey at least she didn’t put salt in them like a certain someone she knew ;)

A DISASTROUSLY LONG DRIVEWAY

Simone dragged Sacia up to the mountains for a weekend with two of her friends, Sacia was just glad for a weekend off from work and she liked Simone’s friends. Lauren was so unlike Simone in a lot of ways, but she was also a lot like Simone. They met in college, when Simone was majoring in creative writing and Lauren was majoring in English, and both dropped out at the same time and moved in with the third friend, Christie.

Christie never even attempted to go to college, instead she got a job straight out of high school at a local diner and stayed with her parents as she saved up for an apartment.

They were such an interesting bunch of girls and together they were a party.

So much of a party they they didn’t wake up until 4PM on sunday when they were supposed to drive back down to NYC. And when they did wake up, they woke up to a good amount of snow covering everything outside.

“Oh, someone is gonna have to shovel all of that,” christie said, staring out at the snow.

“Someone?” Simone asked, “Not me, I didn’t pack any shoveling boots.”

“Do you own shoveling boots?” Lauren asked.

“No,” Simone admitted, “I don’t shovel.”

And that was true, every morning if the steps of the salon had to be shoveled Sacia was the one doing it, she had learned before hand to just stop wearing heels to work. She actually learned that after the first snow and she almost died on the way to work.

“Well I guess that leaves me,” Lauren shrugged, “I doubt Christie even knows how.

“Hey,” Christie started to say but paused, “I guess that okay, actually.”

“Sacia can do it,” Simone volunteered.

“Uhm,” Sacia said, “No?”

“Tell I gotta get to work for an appointment tonight, and if you’ll get us out of here I’ll give you a raise,” Simone offered.

Well Sacia couldn’t say no to that.

Fifteen minutes later Sacia and Lauren are out on the disastrously long driveway trying to clear path for the car. Sacia was cold everywhere, her jeans were soaked through and her gloves were just a blocks of ice.

Lauren paused to take a breath and watched Sacia.

“Can you believe we’re out here shoveling snow?” Lauren said.

Sacia didn’t say anything, she was too focused on trying to stay warm and getting them out of this stupid driveway.

“You’d think that Simone would be smart enough to bring stuff for winter weather to the mountains in the winter,” Lauren scoffed.

Sacia learned this weekend that Lauren was really talkative and couldn’t do much without carrying a conversation at the same time. Even if the conversation was with herself.

“When I get home I’m gonna get an eggnog latte from Starbucks and spend the rest of the day under my blankets,” she went on to say.

“When I get home I’m gonna have to help Simone at work,” Sacia said, “no Starbucks for me until the salon is closed.”

“That sucks,” Lauren said.

“But when I get out of work I’m gonna go home and make myself so many cups of hot chocolate I won’t have to eat for the next week,” Sacia said, smiling at the thought.

Thirty minutes later, when Sacia is officially a walking icicle, they finally get to the end of the disastrously long driveway and run, more like wobble with how frozen they are, up to the house. Sacia wanted to sit in front of the over for the rest of the day but Simone rushed them around telling them to pack up their stuff and get in the car.

“We gotta go!” she kept saying.

Luckily the car had working heating and when they arrived to the salon Sacia felt fully restored to her original non-icicle state. But not luckily she had to shovel the steps of the salon.

She could not wait to get home and drink that hot chocolate.

MULTICOLORED CHRISTMAS TREE GLORY

Mrs. Brown believed in real trees for Christmas, she believed in going out as a family and picking out that perfect tree and cutting it down. After cutting it down they’ll put it atop the car and drive to a nearby diner and eat burgers.

It was another one of her favorite holiday traditions.

But every year it seemed that her children just were not into it like they once were, and they couldn't cut it down themselves because no one really wanted to so they had to get someone else to do it and that ruined the whole family thing and... well it just wasn’t the same.

This year they almost didn’t do it. It was getting close to christmas, only nine more days, and the whole house was decorated head to toe except for a tree. The place where the tree usually stood in the livingroom was sadly empty. Mrs. Brown had tried to arrange a day to get the tree but one of the children were always busy.

But on this monday, nine days before Christmas, Grayson insisted that everyone had to go get a tree. It wasn’t a choice.

“It would be Christmas without a tree,” he insisted.

And he was right, they did have to go get a tree. Harriette had been thinking about it too, everyday when she sat in the living room doing her homework she would look up and notice the absence of the tree. It didn’t quite feel like Christmas yet, even with the bannister covered in garland and wreaths hanging from each of the doors.

Collin didn’t understand why they didn’t just get a fake tree. They didn’t need to go out and cut down a real tree, sure they had a certain charm to them but nothing so important that they couldn’t just skip over it and get a fake one. If they got a fake one they would never have to worry about getting the whole family together and out to the door to the somehow always muddy tree farm. Maybe they watered their trees a bit too much.

But still when Collin came home from school that monday and Grayson told everyone to get ready for some tree cutting he went up to his room and got ready for some tree cutting.

The twins on the other hand were excited as always, along with Tamarai who never seemed to get over the excitement of getting a Christmas tree. They all had their “woodsy” clothes on and were ready by the door in fifteen minutes.

And with that the family piled themselves into the car and drove forty five minutes away to the “BETTER TREE FARM”. What they were better than, who knew?

And after another forty five minutes they were putting a six feet tall tree onto the top of their blue SUV. This was Collin’s least favorite part, because since he was one of the tallest people in this family, the tallest ones were Bobby and Fisher both of whom were not there, he had the “pleasure” of helping Grayson get that tree on their car. They could have gotten help from one of the employees at the farm, but no, their sweet mother wanted them to do it themselves.

“We’ve never needed help before,” she always said.

Thirty minutes later Harriette was helping Collin pick the needles out of him hair as their mom chatted it up with one of the employees.

“I’m never doing this again,” Collin said, “I don’t care if mom wants a real tree next year, I’m not helping pick it out.”

Harriette frowned, “But it’s a tradition.”

“Well some traditions get old,” Collin said.

Harriette shrugged.

She had actually had fun up until then, seeing Collin upset kind of made her upset too. But walking through the acres of trees and inputting her opinion on each one was fun, plus her mom just seemed so happy on these days.

Finally they got back into the car and drove to that nearby diner to eat some burgers, something they all wanted to do. Well not Grayson, who was a vegan and didn’t exactly like being around other people eating meat but he was okay with it for today and ordered himself a veggie burger.

It’s hard to please everyone.

Once they got home they had to get the tree inside, and this time Tamarai helped get the tree off the car because Collin disappeared as soon as the car was parked.

He reappeared again later when they actually decorated the tree, that was really something everyone wanted to do. And they all had fun as they put all of the mismatched ornaments onto the huge tree. And when they were done and it was all lit up in it’s Christmas tree glory they turned off the lights and drank hot cocoa by the bright multicolored lights of the tree.

And Maybe next year they might not all go to cut the tree down, but they will all sit by the light of the tree and drink their hot chocolate. Nobody had a problem with that.

GLITTER GLOWING SNOWMAN

On the front yard of of Barry Adam’s house stood a six feet tall light of snowman. Every year it went up to remind Barry just how much he wished he could make a real snowman. He had lived in Broad Meadows, CA his whole life and had only seen snow a few times. His parent’s weren’t snow people, they never wanted to go on vacations up to snow mountain to ski, like all of Barry’s friends did, no they liked cruise to exotic islands, and they even went to Hawaii for Christmas once.

Where was the fun in that?

And because his parents didn’t like snow Barry had never made a snowman and he really wanted to. He had a good feeling that he could make a pretty good snowman, much better than the glittery glowing one in his yard.

His parent’s didn’t quite understand that and every year they told him the same thing, “if you want to make a snowman so much then why don’t you put out the snowman for us?”.

And he always replied “it’s not the same” and went out and put it up anyway, it had become his job now.

One day he and Terrence were sitting on the steps, they were trying to think of something to do with their Saturday but kept coming up empty. They had just come back from the “Sweater Knitting Club” and Becky had left to help her parents with setting up their Christmas tree.

Christmas trees were another thing Barry’s parents just didn’t get, but that’s for another story.

“I wish we could make a snowman,” Barry said, it wasn’t his first time mentioning to Terrence, he said it about once every day during the winter.

“I know,” Terrence said, “It’s a shame you never have.”

“No need to convince me,” Barry said. Terrence had made a dozen, according to him, their family went on vacations to snowy places all the time and once they spent all of Christmas break up in New York with some of his dad’s relatives.

“Want some ice cream?” Terrence asked.

“Ice cream? In winter?” Barrys aid, “I bet people in New York don’t eat ice cream in December.”

“Sure they do,“ Terrence said, furrowing his brows at barry, “I had some on Christmas when we were there, why else would they sell peppermint ice cream?”

Terrence made a point, and ice cream did sound good right now.

“Sure,” Barry said.

“And hey, we can make mini snowmen in our ice cream!” Terrence said.

Barry grinned at his friend, he was genius!

“You’re a genius!” he said.

Terrence grinned with pride, “right? Come on, let’s go.”

And with that they were off to the local ice cream store and ordered two large vanilla ice cream and rolled them up with them spoon into mini snowmen and decorated them with chocolate chip eyes and gum drop hats. Terrence took pics of them and after that they ate them up fast, as they were melting fast now.

And when they showed the picture to Becky the next day she said “that’s uncanny!”

And it was. And Barry finally got to make a snowman, even if it was really an ice cream man and very small. It still counted to Barry.

MISTLETOE IN THE CLASSROOM

All around A.L. High, in the classrooms and hallways, little bundles of mistletoe have appeared dangling from the ceiling and the students have been hovering around them waiting for someone hot and popular to stand underneath them.

You would think it was weird that a school was promoting kissing in the hallways, but the people at A.L. High didn’t really care. They saw the mistletoe as something cute to spread the love, and if people wanted to wait around for someone hot and popular to stand underneath it them that was their problem.

Lexi, Honey, and Layla liked to watch around for people who accidentally stood beneath the mistletoe at the same time. The ones who were too busy trying to get to their classes to pay attention to silly mistletoe. When Lexi or Honey, not really Layla since she was mostly just going along with them, saw this happening they would stop the rushed students declare that they had to kiss.

The reactions they got were pretty priceless, some of them would grin and laugh but not think that they were serious, some of them would glow bright red and try to laugh it off, some of them would get angry and glare at the girls. But the best of them were the ones who laughed and went right ahead and kissed.

Some of them were mixed reactions, like Terrence and Barry.

Honey saw them out of the corner of her eyes as she was talking to Lexi in homeroom, she was about to leave to get to her own homeroom when she noticed Terrence and Barry standing almost directly under one of those hanging mistletoes.

She laughed, and pointed them out to Lexi. Lexi grinned and they went over to the two guys, still deep in conversation.

“Hey boys!” Honey said.

The guys looked over to them, confusion apparent on their faces.

“Hey,” Terrence said hesitantly.

Then a look of realisation seemed to cross Barry’s face and he looked up quickly.

“Oh my god,” he whispered.

And then his pale face became that now family shade of red.

“Huh?” Terrence said, then looked up himself and laughed.

“Yep, you guys are under the mistletoe!” Lexi said brightly, “you know what that means!”

“We have to kiss now, huh?” Terrence said, “you guys like the mistletoe police?”

“You could call us that,” Honey said.

“Please do actually,” Lexi laughed.

“Alright, Mistletoe Police,” Terrence said. He grinned at Barry who was still looking up at the mistletoe with a pained expression.

“We don’t really have to, do we?” Barry said.

“Why not, we’re friends,” Terrence shrugged, “don’t make it such a big deal.”

Barry frowned.

Lexi and Honey exchanged glances, shaking their head slowly.

“We don’t have all day,” Honey said, “I have to get to class.”

“If Barry’s not comfortable with it, then I’m not doing it,” Terrence said, crossing his arms and staring at the girl defiantly.

Honey scoffed, “you’re standing under the mistletoe.”

Lexi nodded.

Terrence stepped to the side, “now I’m not.”

Barry grinned and did the same.

“Oh shut up, that doesn’t work,” Honey said.

Terrence frowned for a second then, with a slow smile creeping on his face, he pulled the two girls under the mistletoe themselves.

Lexi and Honey looked at each other, shocked. Nobody had tried to do that before.

“We’re cousins!” Lexi said.

“Yeah, that would be creepy,” Honey said.

Terrence shrugged, then grabbed Barry’s hand and pulled him across the room where they took their seats just as the bell rang.

”Oh my god,” Lexi said, kind of grinning.

“That... was gold!” Honey laughed.

“Totally,” Lexi said.

“Oh, but I gotta get to class!” Honey said, “I’ll see you later!”

And with that Honey rushed out of the room just as the homeroom teacher stepped into class and told everyone to please take their seats, which Lexi did very quickly.

Just as I said, people’s reactions were priceless. But these two guys might have took the prize!

GINGERBREAD HOUSES

Harriette awoke to a house full of the spicy smell of gingerbread and smiled sleepily to herself. She got up and slipped on her adorable bear slippers and slipped over to Collins room where he was, of course, already almost ready for the days, just running a straightener through his hair.

“Do you smell what I smell?” Harriette sung as she skipped into the room and sat on his bed.

“If you mean the gingerbread, then I’m guessing yes,” Collin said as he ran the straightener through his hair one more time before turning it off.

“I hope we’re making gingerbread houses,” Harriette said

“Already?” Collin asked, “It’s only the twelfth.”

Harriette shrugged, “why not?”

“I guess you’re right,” Collin said, “I was kind of hoping we could do it when Fedora came over.”

Harriette frowned, “yeah I guess. But we can’t do everything with Fedora.”

“We used to,” Collin pointed out.

Harriette laughed, “Collin, Fedora is in college, we have to do stuff without her sometimes.”

Collin laughed, “you’re right.”

Harriette smiled, “of course. Now I have to get ready, I’ll see you later!”

And with Harriette skipped out of the room and to her own room where she picked out a “casual gingerbread house making” outfit, which was brown leggings and an oversized pink sweater that said “LET IT SNOW” on it.

After throwing that on she carefully brushed out her hair and did some curling so if looked neat before heading downstairs where she could hear Finn and Willow loudly chattering about something.

“Hey kiddles,” Harriette said to the twins as she entered the kitchen where they were sitting at the table with Collin and Grayson.

“Harry!” they said in unison.

Harriette wrinkled her nose, “you know I hate that name.”

The twins laughed and continued telling Grayson about the tree they decorated in school and Harriette went over to say hello to her mom who was mixing some frosting.

“Morning, mommy,” Harriette said, giving her mom a quick peck on the cheek.

“Good morning, darling,” her mom said, “did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby,” Harriette said.

Her mom smiled at her then asked if she could help with the candies, “I just need you to get them all out and set them on the table, but away from the twins please.”

“Alright mom,” Harriette said. she went to the cupboard and got all of the candy and chocolates they would need for decorating the houses. And, just as her mom warned, the second Harriette set them on the table the twins reached out to grab them but she she pulled them away and far away from them.

“Aww,” they said together, with exaggerated pouts.

Harriette then took a seat next to Collin as her mom thanked her.

“Hey,” she said to Collin, “you excited?”

Collin nodded, “I guess.”

“You don’t sound too excited,” Harriette said, frowning, “You better not still be caught up on doing this without Fedora.”

“No Fedora, no fun!” The twins suddenly burst out together.

Harriette laughed, shocked a little.

Collin just shrugged, “they have a point.”

“Hey, I can be fun too!” Harriette said.

“Of course, it’s just a joke,” Collin reassured her.

Harriette laughed and just then their mom put the tray of gingerbread and the piping bags full of frosting.

“Alright, have at it!” their mom said before taking a seat herself. As she watched the kids start to assemble their houses she reminisced on how old they were getting now. Harriette and Collin only had one and a half more years before going off to college and the twins were already ten years old, old enough to do anything really. And there was Grayson, her special little sweetheart, if she was mean enough to choose favorite he would probably be hers. He’s so sweet and so caring, and so perfect. And now he was all grown up, but she still saw him as a little kid. It didn’t help that he was still shorter than her.

And then her other two kids, Fisher and Bobby, not even here for this tradition. Bobby was in Idaho with his girlfriend’s family and Fisher, well to be honest she didn’t really know where Fisher was. For a short while he was living with them, but he moved out during the summer and moved into the city. Sadly she hadn’t heard from him in a while.

Now the everyone had standing houses, the twins’ were a bit lopsided, but they were standing. It wasn’t a surprised to see Collin’s already was looking like a piece of art, and Harriette’s was sweet in it’s own way. Grayson, who asked her to make vegan gluten-free gingerbread, was decorating the door. He looked so sweet.

“Oh my god,” Harriette said after a while, staring at Collin’s house, “I shouldn’t be surprised, but your’s looks amazing!”

Collin blushed slightly, as he always did if someone complimented him, then said quietly “thanks.”

Harriette smiled and went back to her house.

“Look!” Willow exclaimed a few minutes later. She was pointing to one of the little gingerbread people she decorated with bright red pants and a green shirt, the face was two small eyes and she had squirted brown icing all over it.

“It’s Fedora!” Willow said, grinning with pride.

Harriette laughed, “that is so cute.”

“Thank,” Willow said, putting the gingerbread Fedora up next to her house.

Then they were back in actions, silently putting nonpareil on the roofs of their houses, gumdrops lining the bottom, and candy canes just about everywhere. And by the times they were done the twins probably ate more candy then they actually put on their house.

They all proudly showed off their houses, the twins going on and on about their little people in the yard. Collin’s was a classic beauty, Harriette’s was cute, Grayson’s was basic and sweet, and the twins’ were just kind of out of controls.

And after they were done they set them in the living room to show off to their visitors and Harriette and Collin helped clean up the mess and Grayson helped the twins clean up themselves since they kind of got frosting everywhere.