Category: CHRISTMAS

BLOGMAS ~ day 7 ~ CHRISTMAS MUSIC ~ 366.340B

I really enjoyed the 4 hour reel Sandra shared last year, but so many of the songs are so old and odd that I finally had to move on to some more contemporary tunes. I never even thought to look it up again.

  • What are your favorite Christmas songs?
  • Do you have a regular playlist? I do! I still use a CD player with my disc changer and leave it on shuffle if I’m working at home. 😀

I’m all over the place with Christmas music – it really depends on the day, the occasion, my mood, what food we’re eating, are we at home or listening on the radio? – there are just sooooooooo many factors!

BUT, I do like to wait until at least the day after Thanksgiving!

I LOVE so many of the old standards, but I also love a country Christmas and Mannheim Steamroller. I also LOVE Christmas carolers, not that you see many these days. Many years ago I was even part of the hand bell choir at church for Christmas programs.

As for some of MY favorite songs I have a few that top the list, including a few newer artists:

  • It’s Beginning to Look A Lot like Christmas
  • Silent Night
  • Hark the Herald Angels
  • White Christmas
  • Jingle Bell Rock
  • Last Christmas 
  • Born on Christmas Day
  • Winter Wonderland
  • Frosty the Snowman
  • Little Drummer Boy the version with Bing Crosby and David Bowie
  • The Twelve Days of Christmas
  • Deck the Halls
  • Baby It’s Cold Outside
  • Hard Candy Christmas
  • Come All Ye Faithful
  • It Came upon a Midnight Clear
  • We three Kings of Orient
  • Joy to the World
  • Rudolph the Reindeer
  • Do You Hear What I Hear
  • The Most Wonderful Time of Year
  • It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas
  • Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
  • This Christmas by PJ Morton
  • Oh Santa by Mariah Carey
  • Christmas on the Square by Dolly Parton
  • Carol of the Bells by Lindsey Stirling
  • Believe by Josh Groban
  • Underneath the Tree by Kelly Clarkson
  • Merry Christmas Baby by Hunter Hayes

BLOGMAS 2024 ~ day 6 ~ CHRISTMAS MOVIES ~ BLOG 366.339B

Today’s category is USUALLY an easy one for me. It’s also one that really doesn’t change much from year to year. UNTIL last year! The year I decided to make it my mission to find and tape the best Christmas movies from the 1940’s.
My list for the search was; those in purple I actually found and watched – those in blue were added this year to find. The search will continue this year and every year until I see them all.
  • 3 Godfathers (1948) with John Wayne
  • The Bishop’s Wife (1947) with Cary Grant and Loretta Young
  • It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) with Jimmy Stewart
  • Christmas in Connecticut (1945) with Barbara Stanwyck (though she is NOT my favorite)
  • Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) with Judy Garland
  • Holiday Affair (1949) Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh
  • Cover Up (1949)
  • Shop Around the Corner (1940) with Jimmy Stewart
  • Remember the Night (1940) with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck
  • I’ll Be Seeing You (1944) with Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten
  • It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947) with Don Defore, Gale Storm and Alan Hale Jr. (the Skipper on Gilligan’s Island)
  • The Apartment
  • The Honeymooners Christmas

BTW Die Hard IS a Christmas movie!

I start taping Christmas movies on Hallmark as soon as they air so I can watch them ALL year long. I’m a sucker for a happy ending and let’s face it, Christmas movies have happy endings. I watch them while I’m decorating and working through the house.

It’s a toss up for me about whether White Christmas with Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Vera Ellen and Danny Kaye or It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart, Lionel Barrymore and Donna Reed is my absolute favorite, but I think I’m leaning towards It’s a Wonderful life!
Which Miracle on 34th street version (the original with Natalie Wood or the remake with Richard Attenborough) is the best? BOTH versions of course!
The Santa Clause with Tim Allen quickly became a favorite – who could resist visiting the North Pole every year?
Now Home Alone is just silly, as is Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase but, they never fail to make me laugh! A new favorite is the Christmas Chronicles with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn.

BLOGMAS 2024 ~ day 5 ~ DECORATING ~ BLOG 366.338B

Another year has passed and the holidays are upon us again! A late Thanksgiving has put me a bit behind, but I vow to catch up this week 😀

I have to admit I’m one of those people who can’t wait to decorate and leave it up for longer than most. We do have a couple neighbors who fortunately feel the same way we do and the Friday after Thanksgiving had them out taking down the turkey blow-ups and decorating for Christmas. We too wait until the day after Thanksgiving to begin outside decorating.

 

We were at our favorite local Christmas tree farm when they opened the day after Thanksgiving to pick out 2 wreaths for the front porch. If you saw my Happy Homemaker Monday post you know that we were fortunate to get wreaths because they had a fire the next morning and lost their wreath and flocking building so will only have trees the rest of this season. Hubby is going to trade out the green light for another red later this week.

  • Are you a traditional or trendy decorator? I’m a traditional, sentimental decorator. I still have ornaments from when I was a kid and some of my grandparent’s things. We tend to have the same decorations year in and year out, but they may be in different places each year because I add a piece here or there and some even get donated or die by attrition. My ex-sister-in-law recently contacted me about returning some ornaments that my grandmother made that my brother didn’t want back which I thought was so sweet of her! I’m looking forward to having the ornaments back in the family.
  • Are you white lights or multi-colored? This category depends for me. Definitely multi-colored on the tree, but I have white on my sleigh. This year I’m adding some jingle bell garland to those white lights around the sleigh.
  • When do you decorate inside? PLEASE don’t laugh, but since COVID my tree has gone up at Halloween 😀 and stays up through AT LEAST King’s Day.
  • Outside? We wait until after Thanksgiving 😀
  • To Blow or NOT Blow? We’re yes on this category MOST of the time. Years with early snows or stormier than normal windy days we stray away from them. This year I just don’t want to “listen” to the constant hum so we’re building a different set-up with nativities.


In reality how I decorate each year changes based on my mood, weather, where we are living, etc… so it will never be the same twice! But, it will at least be the same components usually.

This is my Snowman Family arranged from 2 different years. They were so much fun to make out of second hand store finds. They were also a lot of work. I ended up only making two snowmen families, shipping one to a friend who lives in Florida and never sees snow 😀
We made candle yule logs for Advent craft night at church one year and they were a HUGE success and soooooooo easy to do.  The decorations below are a few of my all time favorites, several of which I’ve made over the years.
The ornaments below are some of our homemade bulbs.  Several years ago I made quite a few and then did them with my girl scout troop also.  Hubby liked them so well that we have now donated all our store bought bulbs and made enough of these for the entire tree.

My cousin that passed away in 2014 made the ornament below for me.  It will always be hung by my shooting stars in her honor even though I’m still mad at her for leaving the mess called A HOUSE FROM HELL for me to deal with.
And our favorite handmade ornament by Design Chick Creations.

BLOGMAS 2024 ~ CHILDHOOD & FAVORITE CHRISTMAS MEMORIES ~ DAY 4 ~ BLOG 366.337B

WOW there are so many! One of my earliest favorites was when I was 5 and I got my tea table and chairs – my uncle sure looked silly sitting at that table drinking tea with me 😀 I LOVED that table and planned to keep it forever eventually passing it down to my daughter, but when I was in college my dad gave it to my aunt who said it had only been on loan from her all those years 🙁 

But wait, that is not my favorite memory. It turns out that my favorite memory is of trying to stump my dad each and EVERY year with his gift – it became a mission of sorts to be the first person to stump him. I swear the man was like Carnac when it came to knowing what was inside a box. We tried EVERY year to stump him and I don’t remember ever being able to actually do it. We tried adding bricks, taping a silver dollar with duct tape to the bottom so it would flip back and forth to make noise when you shook it, the box inside a box trick, adding a pair of old shoes… but he ALWAYS guessed!  I still don’t know how he did it. Sadly 🙁 this will be the 31st Christmas without him. He died so young, but I have so many wonderful memories of him and Christmas from when I was young.

There of course have been many memories since, but for some reason the childhood ones are the most memorable at times.In more recent years the memories are not about things, but more about times. There was an arctic storm a few years back that blew in and all of a sudden everything turned white. This was our first snowstorm of the season and just before Christmas.

Hubby made this for me to wake up to in the back yard before the snow got too bad.  The house across the street usually looked horrible, but NOT when it was under a blanket of snow.Unfortunately, being in a cul-de-sac, delivery trucks leave MANY tire tracks at this time of year to mar the beautiful snow cover.
The first day after he storm was absolutely gorgeous though!
The duck pond behind the neighborhood was truly a work of art.
Obviously we hadn’t gone anywhere – no tire tracks!
The fish ladder was like glass with the cold and ice.

JSDBFJHSFJKHSD

BLOGMAS 2024 ~ DAY 3 ~ CHRISTMAS CARDS & WRAPPING IDEAS ~ BLOG 366.336B

Do you still send “snail mail” Christmas cards? 😀 We received our first card last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

I do! I know a lot of people have stopped or send virtual cards, but I’m a die hard on this one. I just love sending and getting Christmas cards in the mail. But, I fear they are becoming a thing of the past. Unfortunately I receive fewer and fewer each year it seems. Virtual cards just aren’t the same to me. AND I can’t reuse virtual cards to make the next year as gift tags.

I even painted a set of old shutters in Christmas colors to display them.

I DO try to make my own Christmas cards when I can, and I PLANNED to do homemade again this year, but years like this last year full of issues sometimes finds me sending out box cards.

A local store carries boxed cards that are really nice quality, pretty cute and super affordable. I’m bound and determined that I WILL do homemade again soon 😀

I did try an annual letter a few times, but ended up in just doing a few paragraphs eventually hitting the highlights from throughout the year since.

Here are some cute wrapping ideas. I have been wrapping presents as I go again this year and able to spend a little more time decorating by doing it that way.

 

BLOGMAS 2024 ~ ELF on the SHELF ~ day 2 ~ BLOG 366.335B

I know many parents are tired of ELF on the SHELF, are you? Food Network even had a baking competition that revolved around the ELF on the SHELF last year. I’m not sure if they’re having it this year, but I probably won’t be watching that one again.

I have always loved the actual idea of ELF on the SHELF and have made a list each year of the antics they would get into that year so I could be prepared and hopefully not repeat myself too much!

My munchkins have grown up fast! 2 of 3 of them “KNEW”, but the youngest still believed and we tried keeping the elf/nisse tradition alive another year! BUT, her teacher told the whole class a couple years ago! Who does that? I was soooooo mad! First off it wasn’t her place to tell the kids and what kind of person, especially a teacher, steals a child’s belief of anything? These days the munchkins all tower over me in their teens and our elf/Nisse has become a sentimental fixture in the Christmas decorations.

A few years back I discovered Julenisser, a Nordic tradition, to replace our previous Elf on a Shelf. I couldn’t find that a Julenisser is actually given a name, but I’m winging it here. 😀 The nisse is one of the most familiar creatures of Scandinavian folklore. Again this year we’ll be bringing back Annabelle and her pet reindeer, Alvin. They are always a BIG hit.

In Solvang, a Danish community, they actually do a Nisse Adventure like a scavenger hunt and Danish style JuleFest celebration throughout the month of December.

In Denmark there is a serious subculture regarding the Christmas elves and gnomes known as Julenisser. They live in forests and eat fruits and berries throughout the year before they come spend the month of Christmas with your family. They have BIG hearts and ARE magical and they love to play tricks on you and your family!

Hallmark even did a Christmas movie a while back that involves a Gnome/Troll called MY NORWEIGIAN HOLIDAY.

I know many parents are dreading that darned elf every year and having to come up with at least 24 DIFFERENT scenarios that are different from the previous year!

So when do you begin? Do you have unique names for your elf? Or do you have a Julenisser? Also, do you have a favorite Christmas character? Angels, Snowmen, Nutcrackers, Bears, Gnomes, Reindeer, Peanuts (Charlie Brown, Snoopy…), Elves, Gingerbread Men, Penguins or the BIG man himself, Santa Clause.

I LOVE ALL the Christmas characters, but my favorites are Snowmen, Angels and Reindeer.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the past several years:

BLOGMAS 2024 day 1 ~ HOLIDAY SCHEDULE ~ BLOG 366.334B

Welcome to BLOGMAS 2024. I’m so happy you could join me. Like always, I want to make this fun and no fuss, so join in when you can and I hope you enjoy the insight into my little corner of the holidays.

I’m a list maker and pretty organized so even my BLOGMAS schedule is pretty much in order of occurrence 🙂

This year with Thanksgiving arriving so late I feel like I’m getting a really late start to the Christmas holiday.

Today will start with a trip to the Christmas Tree farm with a girlfriend and her mother to get their trees and I’ll get my front door wreaths followed by a yummy lunch at a favorite local haunt. Hubby and I will be going back for our tree on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday will be spent decorating the tree. Tomorrow and Sunday will be spent dealing with outside decorations. I have some spray painting to get done while the sun is actually shining.

I’m actually keeping the schedule pretty flexible this year. So far the only definite dates are the local county Christmas fair on the 6th, a girls get together on the 11th and dinner and a play with those same girlfriends on the 19th, Wreaths Across America is on the 14th, The Eagle’s Christmas party is on the 15th and the Christmas parade is on the 21st.

CHRISTMOSAS for CHRISTMAS IN JULY ~ BLOG 366.212

I made up this recipe last Christmas when a friend was visiting for dinner, but never got around to posting it so Christmas in July seemed like the best time. I made them “pitcher” style, but you could make them by the glass if you prefer.

CHRISTMOSAS
2 Granny Smith apples, chopped small
1 cup cranberries
1 cup halved green grapes
1 cup pomegranate seeds
1 cup sparkling grape juice
3 cups champagne or Proseco
Sanding sugar, for rims

  • Wash fruit and toss pieces in a bowl, cover and chill several hours before making drinks.
  • Add chilled fruit to pitcher.
  • Top with sparkling grape juice and champagne, stir and serve in sanding sugar rimmed glasses.

BLOGMAS 2023 ~ DAY 31 ~ MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE / NORAD TRACKER ~ BLOG 365.358B

Usually the holiday season is an endless list of tasks and errands. Christmas Eve is usually at our house and then Christmas Day many times too. The last several years though the holiday season has been quiet, many times too quiet. This year will also be quiet, but Santa will still be making his rounds for the little ones.

It’s Christmas Eve and Santa Claus is coming to town tonight. If you have kids, or are just a big kid at heart, you can track Santa’s progress as he travels around the world on NORAD.

Merry Christmas everyone!

BLOGMAS 2023 ~ DAY 30 ~ CHRISTMAS MENUS ~ BLOG 365.357B

While there are family and even cultural traditions for Christmas menus, we try and vary it to OUR own tastes each year. Sometimes that is also dependent on regional availability of the specialty items needed to create those menus.

This year with it just being the 2 of us, we’re really making a super simple “trimmed” down menu. I’ve been searching for the fig jam and finally found a jar, the second to the last one in the whole area from what I can tell. The butcher is even cutting me an extra small prime rib 😀 but there will be enough yummy pieces leftover for the New Year’s black eyed pea chili.