Steve McCarty is announcing that the 13th annual UHY Cares / DMGC Texas Holdem charity event will be back after a 3 year hiatus from COVID. This year's event will be held on Thursday, February 16, 2023 at Petruzzello’s in Troy! I will send out an email to our subscribers once more information and registration is available. You can always contact me at mccartymetro@gmail.com if you have any questions, and I will make sure someone gets back to you. Looking forward to this event!

New on the Tik Tok platform is the former drummer for Brad Savage & The Cockroaches, Lake Speed. In just several days, he already has amassed 114 followers, and over 1000 likes of his humorous videos. Check him out and follow on Tik Tok and YouTube under Larry McCarty which he has over 11,000 views. You'll be glad you did!

Keep things as simple as possible. If you find that you are unable to manage the twenty-five different cookie recipes you want to make, pick two or three of your specialties and just make large batches of those. Don’t serve fifteen different dishes for Christmas dinner. Just make the five or six favorites.

Cut scraps of fabric or felt into Christmas shapes. You can do this by using cookie cutters or templates. Then attach them to twine, wire or ribbon and use for garland all over the house or on your tree.

When stringing popcorn for garland, let it sit for a couple of days to get stale. Stale popcorn is easier to string.

Use gift bags instead of wrapping paper. We save our gifts bags each year and it’s always fun to see who gets a particular bag the next year. Start a tradition of writing the names in the top corner and each year add the next name and see how the bags go around.

Wrap some of the pictures you have hanging on the wall to look like packages. This can be a really cute and inexpensive addition to your decorations!

Send your Christmas packages early. This may seem like an obvious tip, but many people don’t do it. You can save a huge amount of money by doing this. Not only will you save money, but the more things you can get done and out of the way early, the fewer things you will have to do all at once at the last minute when too many tasks are already stressing you out!

When you have to send things through the mail, think about what you’ll buy. Is it fragile, heavy or very large? None of these are good candidates for shipping. Instead, send smaller items like videos, CDs, or books, which can be sent inexpensively by Media Mail. If you’re OK with gift certificates, you can usually send them for the price of one stamp.

Do you like to have fresh greenery in your home for Christmas? Go to any place that sells Christmas trees (tree lots, Lowe’s, Walmart, etc.) and ask for the branches and cuttings that have fallen off. They are usually glad to get them off of their hands since they’re just going to throw them away. Besides using them for decorations, try tucking them in and around your artificial tree to give it that fresh tree smell. (We sometimes go to a local park after a windy day and collect freshly fallen evergreen boughs.)

Put a candle in a glass jar or bowl for the kids’ table at Christmas or just to use as a cute decoration. Fill the rest of the bowl around the bottom of the candle with cinnamon candies, peppermints, nuts or colored gum balls or jaw breakers.

Instead of a fancy tree skirt, use a white sheet. The colored gifts look great against the white.

Don’t worry about the extra expense of a “tree extender”. They don’t really work. Your tree just needs lots and lots of water. Make sure the cut end is always under water or it’ll seal itself shut and stop drinking. Check often! Your tree may drink gallons of water in the first few days.

Go to your carpet store and ask for the cardboard cores that carpet comes on. Wrap them in white plastic trash bags and twist red ribbon around them. That way you can have instant giant peppermint sticks for outside decorations (and they don’t cost $50 each like the ones in the stores).

Are some of your Christmas decorations and ornaments looking a little battle-scarred and worn? Maybe you want to change from the country look to a more sophisticated look? Try spray-painting your older things with gold, silver or copper paint.

Recycle that artificial tree that you don’t want anymore. Bend the branches and connect them to make either one very large wreath or several small ones.

If you send a lot of cards each year, consider sending postcards instead of Christmas cards. They are less expensive to buy and cost less to send. You can even recycle some of the fronts of old Christmas cards to use as postcards.

Got more eggnog than you can drink? Use leftover eggnog for French toast. Just add a little cinnamon to it and it works wonderfully. You can also make Eggnog Pound Cake.

It’s Christmas and try to remember this is really about the birth of Christ and if we don’t get those cookies we wanted to make done it’s OKAY!!!

If you have any household tips, tricks, or hacks, send them to me at mccartymetro@gmail.com