It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!!

As I sit here at my computer, I'm feeling all relaxed and wonderful because I just spent the afternoon at the spa. Ahhh. Many thanks to my sweet Hubs, who gave me a spa gift card last summer for my birthday. I decided to use the whole thing in one day, and I had a mani/pedi and a massage. It was so luxurious and relaxing. They also let you use their other facilities, so I took a steam and then showered in this awesome shower with three spigets. They had this delicious-smelling shampoo and conditioner in the shower, so now my hair is peppermint scented. My finger nails are a natural light pink, and my toes are a jolly Christmas red!

In the spirit of the holiday season, I thought I'd post some fun pics I've taken over the past couple of weeks.

We don't have room in our place for a big tree, so we bought three small ones and put them on our sofa table. It was so fun to pull out the box of Christmas ornaments that my mom has saved for me over the years to decorate with.

Hubs put the Santa hat on top of the tree.


My stepdad, John, was a bit of a clothes horse. He worked in sales for most of his working life, and wore neckties a lot. After he passed away four and a half years ago, we decided to make a Christmas tree skirt out of his neckties. Actually, there were enough for us to make two! So my mom has one around her tree, and I have one around mine. It looks really festive and is always a fun way to remember him. My mom can even remember which ones he wore for certain occassions, so she'll sometimes say, "I remember when he wore that one to the Christmas party. He wore that one at our wedding." *warm fuzzies*

Some of our friends have an annual Christmas cookie night. It is a large gathering with massive amounts of chocolate chip cookies and music. The hosting family has a lot of musical talent, so we all gathered around the piano and sang carols as father and son played guitar and piano. We also played "Silent Night" on bottles.

One night, we had a dinner party with some friends and I thought it would be fun to make a candle platter. So I placed several pillar candles of varying heights on a serving platter and lit them up! It was beautiful and smelled marvelous.


The only thing is that all those flames so close together get hot, and it ends up looking like this. I think it was worth it, but I'm not sure what it will be like to clean that up. Hopefully it will come right off. I'm optimistic that way:





I grew up decorating gingerbread houses that my mom would construct from shoe boxes and graham crackers. I was so thrilled when our friends Heather and Shiloh (cool names, huh?) brought me a gingerbread house kit. The bread was already made and it came with all the icing and candy, so all I had to do was assemble and decorate. I copied the decorating design on the box and it came out all colorful and cheery. I have it on our living room table, and every so often, I get a whiff of gingerbread. Mmmm.





I hope you all are having a very joyful holiday season so far!


Lots of love,
Starshine