It's almost Christmas!!

I managed to get some shopping done this weekend. I need to do a little more to be finished, but I feel like I can breathe now. I hope you are done with your shopping and are able to enjoy your holiday.

We hosted the December family breakfast today. We had a small crowd, but it was fun. We ate bacon-peppered and regular-, sausage, eggs, biscuits and gravy, French toast, tea, coffee and juice, and citrus salad. Benjie discovered that he liked grapefruit!

Speaking of Benjie, he'll be baptised Sunday night! We are so proud of him. He is growing up so fast. I don't think Jonah will be far behind him.

I have finally finished decorating the house. It didn't turn out completely like I wanted it to, but it's ok. I have 14 trees this year, including the small ones and the outside one. It's a lot of work to get it all done, but it's so fun. My house is very small, but there's always room for another tree!!

I'll check in later with an update on the shopping! It'll get done, or it won't! Either way, Christmas is in 10 days!!

Christmas shopping

I am so far behind in my Christmas shopping! I am a finish by Thanksgiving girl, but this year...not so much! Here it is, a few days before Christmas and I'm still not anywhere near done. I'm about to begin to panic. Santa is in danger of being a Scrooge this year if I don't get going.

I plan to make some candy today or tomorrow, then shop on Friday. Saturday is our December family breakfast. I began a few months ago hosting breakfast one day a month for both sides of the family. I try to have a different theme each month. This month it's "Winter Welcome". I'll post some pictures of the festivities! My original idea was to have a different menu each month. However, Lynn has requested the same menu every time-bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy and pancakes. Since he works so that I can have parties, I've decided to go along with him! I think this month, though, we'll get a little wild and crazy and have French toast instead of pancakes. Hope we can stand the excitement.

Ladies' Christmas Brunch

I attended the funnest thing yesterday-a Ladies' Christmas Brunch. I went with my sister in law Kim. It was at her church and it was really nice. All of the tables were decorated by the "hostess" at the table. Everyone used their Christmas dishes and pretty stemware and flatware. One lady used her wedding china-and she's been married 50 years. It was beautiful-silver and white china on a white tablecloth, with red chargers and napkins in the crystal glasses. So Christmasy!

We used my Christmas dishes on a green tablecloth, and put my wedding chapel from my Snow Village on a cake plate as a centerpiece. I thought it looked pretty. I love that piece of the village, and the Christmas dishes are a special treat to use. They belonged to my mother in law, and she gave them to me before she passed away. We use them from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Day, then we switch to snowmen, which we use until Valentines' Day.

The food at the brunch was yummy, especially the chocolate fountain! I dipped pretzel twists, cherries and strawberries. It was yummy! In addition to delicious food, we had pretty music and a great speaker.

It was just the thing to get me back in a Christmas mood and on the ball toward getting projects started and finished. I love Christmas, but I've had a hard time getting things done this year.

I hope I get invited back next year!

Christmas Sweaters

I recently ran across a blog that was doing a poll on the internet, asking about Christmas sweaters. They seem to think that wearing a sweater, sweatshirt or tee-shirt with Christmas images is tacky. There were some very strong opinions. They used ugly language to describe these fashion choices-words like tacky, tasteless and dorky. I beg to differ.

I wait 11 months to wear my Christmas clothes. I have a sweater with snowmen that has actual wooden light bulb charms hanging on a Christmas tree; another wool jacket that has Santa and snowmen on it; I have a sweatshirt that Mom made that has holly leaves painted on it; and several button up blouses that have various holiday scenes. I don't care if they are tacky, tasteless or dorky. I think they show my Christmas spirit, and every time I wear one, someone comments on it in a positive way. I don't need some internet snob telling me I am tacky when I wear my holiday finery. I have a family for that.

And while I'm on the subject.....

Minimalist Christmas

Currently there is a trend in home decorating magazines, tv shows and newspaper articles toward minimalism at Christmas. They actually advocate barely decorating for Christmas, with a spindly little tree with about 7 ornaments on it, a single wreath with no embellishments at all save a small red bow (no glitter or sparkles anywhere on it) and using hot pink, purple and lime green as your Christmas colors. Excuse me???

Ok, first off, Christmas is no time to start reining in with your decorating. That's what Christmas is all about...ok, ok, I know Christmas is about the birth of our Saviour and being with family and all, but why not do it with a little style. What would Jesus do? He would put up a 9 foot tree, load it with lights, ornaments and glitter and have a killer party for all His friends. Well, maybe He wouldn't, but I don't think He minds it if I do.

Christmas houses need big fluffy trees loaded with multicolored lights. It's ok to use all white, as long as you don't have small children in the house. If you have children under 12, you need to use multicolored lights. White lights don't look like Christmas lights to children. Also, if you must have a designer tree, try to have another for the kids. Kids like bright colors, traditional Christmas colors of red, green, gold and silver. Blue is ok, if there is some red and green somewhere in the room. Have a tree that they can decorate with their homemade ornaments. It's best if it's the main tree, but if you can't stand the idea, let them have one in their room. My kids love having trees and lights in their rooms. Right now Jacob has green lights strung on his red bed. Benjie and Jonah have a string of multicolored lights around the window. There should be at least one nativity scene. I've started collecting them, and have two big ones-one I received as a wedding present, the other I received the same year as a Christmas gift from a coworker who was my secret Santa. I've picked up several more at discount stores, flea markets, antique stores and even the dollar store. They are all very pretty to me.

You need a collection of something-Santas, snowmen, reindeer, icicles, something. Three of anything is a collection-just group them together and point to them when you mention collections in conversations with friends. They'll get it.

You should also have stockings. They are critical and should reflect the person they belong to. Right now at our house we have multicolored chenille stockings with cranberry red cuffs. I think they reflect me more than anyone, but I have boys. They don't care what they look like, just that Santa loads them down with oranges, apples, nuts and candy on Christmas morning. Oh, and the occasional movie or video game doesn't hurt!

Outside, there should be lots of lights, a tree on the porch and a wreath on every window. Even the mailbox needs some decoration-evergreen wreaths and big red velvet bows.

I don't like minimalism in decorating any time, but if you must do it, please, don't do it at Christmas.

Christmas Parade

Tonight we went to our city's Christmas parade. It was the usual assortment of marching bands, ROTC, scouts, beauty queens, church floats, police cars, antique cars and horses. But, the big finale was the best-one of the best Santas I've ever seen, riding on top of the city's biggest fire truck-the one with the big, tall ladder that they use mostly for putting up and taking down Christmas decorations. But if we ever get a three story building in town, the fire department will be ready.

After the parade, we walked down to the courthouse and the kids looked at all the life-sized displays. They are so cute-the displays and the kids!! We had so much fun. We took thermos of hot chocolate, as we always do, and it was a welcome warmer upper tonight! It was cold! Benjie and Jonah went on a two man mission to drink as much hot chocolate as humanly possible. When we got to the courthouse lawn, some ladies had a booth set up with free cocoa and cookies, so we all had a sugar cookie, just in case we didn't have enough sugar in our systems!

Then we came home and did homework.

Midnight Musings...rambling insomniatic thoughts

This is such a busy time of the year for everyone. It's hard to believe that it's almost Christmas again. I plan for it 12 months out of the year...you wouldn't think that it would still surprise me when it gets here!

I walked into the church this morning, and it almost took my breath away. It has been decorated for Christmas to the hilt-there are so many lights and poinsettias that you'd swear I had something to do with it, but I didn't. I don't think I've ever seen the church look so beautiful, except when it was decorated for our wedding. It was pretty beautiful that night!!

Someone told Lynn that they had used 500 poinsettias in the decorations. I'm sure there's at least 10,000 lights-and I'm not exaggerating at all. It is just gorgeous. Good job, flower committee!!

Another beautiful sight is the courthouse downtown. I drove by there on my way home tonight, and it was so pretty that I had to stop and look for a minute. While I was looking, Bing Crosby started singing "White Christmas" on the radio. It was a true Kodak moment. It almost made the pain of putting several hundred dollars in the night deposit at the utility department less. Almost.