Happy New Year to everyone. I feel like Saturday, my feet finally hit the floor. Prior to that it was all a whirl wind of making presents and being present (at parties and functions), making merry around here and all that encompasses our holidays. I do miss the general feeling of walking out into the world and everywhere around us celebrating Christmas also but I am happy to now celebrate the quieter parts of Christmas with just us since all stores, public areas and most of our friends have now moved onto preparing for the next thing.
If you have been around here for our previous Christmases then you already know that we are just getting warmed up and have only really started our holidays until a few days before Christmas came and went for the rest of the world.
Our holidays you ask, oh but they were lovely!
These holidays we:
:: Went shopping to pick the fabric for this years Christmas bags as we do every year
:: Embroidered the year on this years two bags to be added to our collection
:: Baked gingerbread, sugar, chocolate chip cookies, caramel puffed corn (oh my so good!)
:: Had friends over for a cookie baking and exchange
:: Made lip balms and sugar scrubs to gift to our friends with our beloved essential oils (more on that later)
:: Made cream cheese mints to go with the other goodies in baskets
:: Found that many of my vintage ornaments had been damaged when something fell on the box I keep them in. Very sad but now I will start a new search for even more of them. I do love them so
:: Decked every inch of this house
:: Spend many nights behind closed doors creating gifts for each other
:: Finally got my very own Christmas tree in my bedroom. Something I have always wanted since I was a little girl. (I do think it merits its own post so I won’t go into it too much)
:: Ate lots and lots of popcorn and celebrated another Christmas season together and then rang in the new year.
:: Had an evening away with Poppa which was quite fun and so good to be alone with my sweetie. One benefit to having so many big children in the house along with a now 18 year old (though we still had a friend stay over for good measure)
:: Livie lost her first tooth
:: Watched an abundance of Christmas movies, old and new
:: Had a great laugh when we realized that Alexandra had chosen the same clothing colors for our grandsons as we did for our kids here. Even though the miles seperate us, our hearts are still one
These days we are just resting and enjoying being off from school, until Epiphany comes around and making lots of warm and comfy foods. There are many walks in our woods happening here. The smells of our woods really does call me and today as we walked out there the sun came out and for a second it seemed to be shining down just on us. I do not long for spring at the moment. I am too busy enjoying this season as it is just getting started. I am actually still working on the last gifts for family that will be going out super duper late and its a good thing that our loved ones understand how overwhelmed this mama gets sometimes. All in good time and we love each other everyday not just on Christmas.
I do hope your holiday was lovely and I would love to hear about it!