My Perfectionism Problem

We had our Christmas cookie exchange last night which meant that my past few days were spent furiously crafting to get our place nice and festive before anyone came over.

I finally finished the tree skirt that ended up being the tree skirt from heck. I was planning on doing a large, simple whip stitch around the edges, but then I decided I liked the blanket stitch better but I'm not very good at it (well, I am now, I got a lot of practice) so that really slowed me down. Then I decided that I liked little stitches better than big ones so that slowed me down more. Since the skirt's radius was 3 feet, that left me with more than 18 feet of teeny tiny blanket stitches. Dang my perfectionism. But I did go easy on myself when I decided to use iron on fusing to attach the snowflakes instead of sewing them on. I think if I had to do one more blanket stitch on that thing I would just throw the whole thing out. I should have just bought a tree skirt, but I wanted something simple and everything I saw was just too much.
After that was done, I moved on to my candy cane Christmas wreath. This too was not as easy as I had planned. I mean, all you do is hot glue tons and tons of mini candy canes onto a green Styrofoam wreath, right? How could that be hard? Well, it was going fine until I ran out of candy canes. (I bought 300; who would have thought that I would need more?) I went back to the dollar store where I bought them but they were out as were the next 3 stores I tried to find them at. Why was there such a run on candy canes when I still have 12 days left until Christmas? It makes no sense. I finally found some at Wal-mart but they were a different kind. That left one chunk of my wreath looking completely different from the rest and even a bow wouldn't cover it up. So I had to add a whole new layer on top and try to blend the two types. Again, this would not have been such a problem if I could let the little things go but sometimes I just can't. I am going to post a picture which I think is a good baby step for me and my problem. Despite my complaining, this was a fun, easy craft and as long as you realize it will take 400-500 candy canes to complete. Really, does it look like that many? I don't think so.
It's not that I think if I didn't have a wreath or a tree skirt somehow everyone would think my holiday party was a sham and not attend because that would just be silly and I really think much more highly of my guests than that but it was just the deadline I set for myself so that I would not be stressed in the days close to Christmas. And I'm not as stressed as my last few posts would leave people to believe. Well, I am until I write about it then I feel much better even though I leave the impression that I am a completely psycho Christmas decorator. But that's okay. I am probably completely psycho about other things that I don't share so it evens out in the end.

But I'm not that stressed since I am down to just the stockings before my Christmas craftiness is over. But I will work on those during the days that I have off when Craig still has to work. I need something to do while watching Matlock. I have to admit that I heart Matlock. He is most definitely my favorite fictional criminal defense lawyer. But that is another post in itself.