skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I don't know about everyone else, but I always feel a bit relieved when the holidays are over. Sometimes there can be much frantic activity, it can really get out of hand. No matter how hard I try, I cannot completely relax during the month of December. Yes, the holidays are fun but what a relief when they are over. No plans, no thoughts of gifts, no cards, no last minute shopping. Shew!
We did have a wonderful Christmas, though. My daughter asked for a shelf... and a Nintendo DS! (For a minute, we thought we got away easy!) She wanted the shelf to display all of her Littlest Pet Shop pets and other assorted small toys. On Christmas morning, she rushed into the bedroom shrieking "Mommy, Daddy - there's a gift beside the tree that's as big as a door!"
My husband bought the new camera we both wanted and we had fun taking all sorts of unique pictures (some of which I have posted on Sunniviews.) We had our lovely bagels for breakfast, coffee with Irish Creme and a delicious prime rib dinner. My husbands favorite gift was a radio-controlled off-road car (with a top speed of 42 mph, of which he is very excited.) He's been obsessed all week!
Some of my favorite gifts included a beautiful bird-shaped birdhouse made by my parents (see their creations here and shop here), a sterling silver ring printed with the word "DREAM", a stack of books from the early 1900's including Alice in Wonderland, The Lady of the Lake, The Song of the Pilgrim and Black Beauty, and the infamous "Looking Good For Jesus" vanilla lip-balm that claims to return lips to near virgin quality!
Of course, Dasher enjoyed his two gifts - a new bear and a frisbee! We captured his excitement on video:
And now, so quickly it seems, we move onto the New Year! So - Happy New Year to everyone, especially my dear family and new blogger friends. So much to be thankful for, so many blessings!
All of our shopping is done (for the most part!) and we've been busy wrapping gifts this week. My husband and I decided that we would invest the money that we normally use to buy each other gifts and purchase a new camera. Since we still like to open things on Christmas day, I challenged us to buy as much as we can for each other under a budget of $15.00. After his initial shock and objection, I explained that we'd just have to work harder by scouring thrift stores to find fun and useful items!
Let me just say that from now on, the thrift stores are my top choice for gift shopping. I found the best gifts for so cheap! It was unbelievable. One day I bought nearly everything for my entire family for less than $20.00! Beautiful pottery, unique trivets, books, paintings, stuffed animals, games and clothes - it was astounding! (And really, what a great way to help environment - by purchasing things that would otherwise end up in a landfill!)
Luckily, I have a pretty creative family so we also exchange fun homemade gifts. My husband makes a herb infused olive oil every year (this year is garlic, basil and roasted shallots - yum!) My parents and sister create paintings and wooden crafts and I usually do something different every year: mosaics, jewelery, hand-bound books, eye pillows with homemade sachet potpourris. One year I made decoupaged wooden trays featuring each persons favorite things. Instead of covering it with decoupage glue, I used a thick polyresin that is durable and looks like glass!
Speaking of favorite things, my mom at Donna's Art tagged me with this fun little game: "12 Christmas Things About Me Hoopla." Here are the rules:
1. List 12 random things about yourself that have to do with Christmas.
2. Please refer to it as a 'hoopla' and not the dreaded 'm' - word.
3. You have to tag specific people when you're done. No "if you're reading this consider yourself tagged" stuff is allowed...because nobody actually ends up doing it. The number of people who you tag is really up to you, but the more the merrier to get this 'hoopla' circulating through blogosphere.
4. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it. Lets involve as many people as possible!
5. Please give Andrea some link-love as the "Hoopla-Creator".
So, here are my 12 things:
1. I love Christmas music so much, I could listen to it for weeks on end. My favorite song (among many) is Christmas Canon by Trans-Siberian Orchestra and choirs singing Christmas music always makes me cry (unless I'm the one singing, of course...)
2. I have to have a live tree every year, would never even dream of getting a fake one, and have a soft spot for poor mis-shapen trees that are left behind.
3. We make reindeer food for Rudolph and sprinkle it on the lawn on Christmas Eve.
4. My mom bakes tons of Christmas cookies to pass out to the family, just like her mom before her. I still remember my Nanny in the kitchen with tupperware stacked to the ceiling filled with cookies. She kept track by counting them all, which was always a mystery to me!
5. My favorite cookies are lemon bars and peanut-butter kisses.
6. When I was a kid, I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and sneak out to peek at the tree. I still remember the feeling of surprise and wonder at seeing all the gifts that magically appeared there. Christmas magic still surrounds the holidays for me and I try to create that for my daughter every year.
7. That's probably why I love Christmas lights that sparkle like stars in the dark...
8. And the hushed reverence of a Christmas Eve Candlelight service.
9. I love all Christmas movies I have every seen... Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and funny ones like The Christmas Story and The Ref.
10. We always have lox and bagels on Christmas morning with Bailey's in our coffee.
11. My grandparents lived close to us when we were growing up and I loved that we could have three Christmas celebrations - ours, Nanny & Pappys and Grandma & Grandpas - filled with noisy, jolly family and scrumptious Christmas meals.
12. When I was younger, I ripped through every Christmas present I got with anticipation and excitement. Now I like to linger over presents and enjoy watching the reactions of family members as they open their gifts rather than open my own (which is probably why I'm always the last one to open all my gifts.)
And so, it looks like lots of my friends have already been tagged with this game, but I will go ahead and tag Shelbi at Keeper of the Chocolates (although her latest post appears to mention wonderful things in her life about Christmas.) Only 2 more days!
A friend of mine turned me on to a new website called "Elf Yourself" (sponsored by Office Max.) You superimpose your head (family's heads, cats, dogs, frogs - the possibilities are endless!) onto these dancing elf bodies. There is a snappy, jazzy version of Jingle Bells that plays in the background along with your jiggy, little elves! Once you're finished, they give you a web link for your dancing family which you can send to friends and family. As you can see, we had fun with ours. (You'll might also notice that my daughter is not wearing sunglasses - but two pirate eye patches, one with a skull and cross-bones! If you remember, we went through a pirate phase recently. More about that here...) It's really hilarious and I think our Dasher-dog elf was the funniest!
The only issue I notice with this is that it may require a lot of memory or certain plugin because I had some friends that weren't able to bring up with website. But, I think it worked for most everyone. You can insert up to 4 faces and add a personalized voice message.
Here is the link of our dancing elves and the main link if you'd like to make one of your own! If you're not quite in the holiday spirit this year, they also offer a Scrooge Yourself which looks pretty funny. I just love holidays and all these silly internet things they offer! So much fun!
(UPDATE: Apparently you need to have the most recent version of Adobe Flash to play the video...)
Every year, my office holds a door decorating contest (or cube-decorating contest for those of us in cubicles.) It creates quite a buzz with everyone discussing their new ideas for the year. This year was no different! We had Santas falling down chimneys, giant door-sized wrapped gifts, winter wonderlands, crackling fireplaces, lots of Christmas trees and plenty of festive wreaths.
I based my decorations on a quote I found several weeks ago and modified it slightly:
"A single candle can light a thousand and not be diminished... Happiness never dwindles when it is shared."
I got some large cardboard from the warehouse and cut out a giant Christmas tree. I hooked up the drill and punched about 150 holes in it to hold about 150 lights. I taped a candle light to the top and surrounded it with a golden cardboard halo drenched in glitter. I folded some bright red paper strips and made little cutout people joined by hand and foot with sparkling hearts on their chests. I used about 10 large paperclips folded inside-out to hook it to my cubicle fabric, hung some wrapping paper as my background and glued my lovely quote beside it. It turned out to be quite pretty!
This year, our judges were a group of volunteers that come every week. They are from a home of mentally challenged adults and are the sweetest, most loving people you've every met. Of course, we couldn't fraternize with the judges as they walked by, but I heard them and had to hold back the tears as they read the quote on my cube to their counselors. It was so touching! When they left, our receptionist found some t-shirts and pens to give them as a thank-you for their hard work and you would have thought she was handing out a million dollars to each of them. They were ecstatic! What a perfect group to judge such a fun and festive competition!
Anyway, we had our Christmas party a few days later and I was shocked to hear that I had won first prize this year! What an honor!
Here is a sample of some of my amazingly creative co-workers... Kudos to everyone!
Yesterday was my birthday and I tried to not mention it at work earlier this week. Only because last year, the birthday thing kind of snowballed out of control. We got into this birthday frenzy going out to eat, meeting after work or getting cards and gifts for every birthday of everyone in the office. Heaven forbid someone was forgotten. It was just crazy. We eventually just let the birthday plans fizzle out.
But, my birthday secret slipped. I really tried not to let it, but you see, it was simply an exhausting, anxiety-filled week. At one point I just happened to blurt out, "I just don't want to have to work this weekend, of all weekends - it's my birthday weekend!" Well, apparently the ears of several co-workers perked up at that comment.
So, Friday rolled around. It was a long, tiresome week. I work for a non-profit and this is the busiest time of the year. Everyone is hyped up on chocolate and coffee and feeling a little beserk when one of our colleagues bursts in the office and announces that the boss just called a mandatory meeting - quick, but important. "Everyone grab a notebook!", which translates to more work coming down the pipeline.
I grab the chocolate bowl for us and we trudge to the conference room. We're trying to organize the seating and my boss calls for someone to get more chairs from his office (our conference room is a tad small.) But, alas, instead of more chairs she comes back with more people - a group of folks from other departments! She's holding a beautiful plant and cake and all of a sudden, the room bursts out in song... "Happy Birthday to you!..."
Holy cow! My very first surprise party - and boy, was I ever blindsided! I wanted to laugh out loud, but I just happed to be trying to swallow a Hershey's kiss that I ate in preparation for bad news! How funny and bizarre the whole scene was at that exact moment.
I got a lovely card from all my sweet friends, we sat and enjoyed cake and laughed at my utter shock. Our media manager shoots pictures in the background and my boss has to pat me on the hand and reassure me that there is no meeting. Really. (I admit, I'm perhaps slightly type-A personality!)
It was crazy and funny and such a joy. I'm so grateful for such wonderful, supportive colleagues. I've already framed my lovely card and will hang it in my office to remind me that life doesn't need to be taken so seriously. Funny how that reminder sometimes comes in the strangest ways.
Thanks guys - you are all super-awesome!!
I don't know about everyone else, but I always feel a bit relieved when the holidays are over. Sometimes there can be much frantic activity, it can really get out of hand. No matter how hard I try, I cannot completely relax during the month of December. Yes, the holidays are fun but what a relief when they are over. No plans, no thoughts of gifts, no cards, no last minute shopping. Shew!
