Holiday Festivities

Hi! I hope you had a great weekend and enjoyed some holiday activities. I took the weekend off from crafting and blogging to do some shopping, have a little girl time and run through our first snow! Like a kid I stood there with my tounge out, catching snowflakes. Yummy! They were wet ones!

Here in North Carolina, we get an average of eight inches of snow a year which means that some seasons we don't get any and when we do get some snow, it almost always falls in January and February. This weekend, however, we were surprised with our first snow on December 4th! My girlfriend and I made a little trip to Hillsborough, North Carolina, a quaint little town with some antique shops like The Cottage photographed above.

Here's a photo of the downtown area with the city Christmas tree in view. It really feels like Christmas when snow is falling all around you! When I look at this photo I think of the holiday song, City Sidewalks!

During the past week, while visiting some of your blogs, I've enjoyed seeing your Christmas decorations. I love that blogging and technology allows us to 'visit' one anothers' homes and share our holiday traditions and decor with each other. So today I thought I would share some photos of our Christmas home with you.

Our lovely tree is an eclectic mix of old and new, Hallmark and a few finer hand blown pieces with a Lenox and Waterford or two mixed in. I have one ornament on the tree from my childhood. In 1984, I bought my first Hallmark ornament. Since then every year we've collected ornaments as gifts, we purchased some and I've made many. It's a history of all our Christmases combined.

This year we have an antique sled under the tree. This photo was taken weeks ago before the tree was up, but it shows the sled at a better angle. I can't wait to fill it with some pretty packages. This weekend I found an adorable old metal xylophone to place under the tree too. Isn't it precious? Having old toys under the tree that my husband and I would have played with when we were children evokes magical Christmas memories!

Here are some antique mercury glass ornaments I've been picking up here and there. Some of these are so old they feel like fragile tiny bird eggs!

I thought a photo of them would look appropriate in an old silver tray that needs polishing!

On the top shelf of this built-in bookcase, we have all nine of Christopher's photos with Santa. I love to see how he's grown each year and how he reacted to Santa each year. The middle shelf on the left hand side houses the five plaster buildings I hand painted in the early 1990s.

Here's a close up of the train station. I put many hours of painting into each of these wee buildings. Such fond memories!

I hope you enjoyed visiting with me today as I enjoy having you stop by. I'll be browsing your blogs this week to see your projects, decorations, recipes and activities. Enjoy every minute! :) Kathy

December Third

Today has been a busy crazy day! A great day! I've been preparing for a last minute invitation to set up and run a craft booth at Raleigh's Winterfest tomorrow night! Apparently, a vendor became ill so the event coordinator jumped on Etsy to find a creative replacement and found my shop! Funny how things like this happen! Anyway, so I've been running around like a crazy woman preparing for this event that will take place in less than 24 hours! Thank goodness for dear friends like Audrey who is going to work the booth with me and bring her goods to sell as well. Together we're going to put on the best darn craft booth there! So, if any of you can join us, we would LOVE to see you!

There will be tons of fun activities for the whole family, including choral and dance groups, ice skating, train rides, a tree lighting ceremony, food, free carriage rides and more. The Crafters and Artisans Market will be open from 5-9 pm. For more information on the event, log onto http://www.raleighwinterfest.com/.

Another thing I managed to do today, that I couldn't put off any longer, was to wrestle our Thanksgiving turkey and strip the remaining meat before it flew south! It's amazing how long it takes to do this and how much meat there is! I had enough to freeze half for soup next week and I made turkey chili with the other half today. Thanks Audrey for the idea! :) Anyway, I simply used a package of McCormick's chili seasoning, followed the recipe replacing the hamburger meat for turkey. I also added a bit of corn. Done!

The final thing I'd like to share with you, this third day of December, is our Christmas tree. We always put up the tree on Thanksgiving weekend. We have so many special ornaments that we have collected over the years that we want to enjoy them for as long as possible. Almost every evening in December, we sit in front of the tree after dinner and drink hot cocoa with mini marshmallows and a dash of cinnamon. Ah, life is good! Thanks for joining me for another day in December post. Enjoy!