It doesn’t really matter which day of Christmas this is. They’ve all been very pleasant.
Dear Husband and I were Empty Nesters on Christmas Eve, and chose to have dinner at Mother’s church, followed by the traditional candlelight service. Christmas Day we traveled to celebrate with his children and our grandchildren. I swear, the girls could open a toy store!!! *S*
This year has been very laid back, and low key, and comfortable. I didn’t get the tree decorated, but we’ve really enjoyed the lights. I was battling with two fake trees that had light problems, and decided to quit fussing with the smallest one. We have a fake Sitka spruce tree that is up year ’round with ornaments that my quilting bee has given to me. Dear Husband felt that tree was enough! And you know…..I think it was, too, but it was in the foyer so that everyone would see it as people came into the house. As we wrapped gifts, we put them under that tree. Perhaps next year it will have a more prominent place in our living room.
The last few days before Christmas I made non-Christmas cookies. With the exception of Russian Tea Cakes and Sugar Crisp which I only make at Christmas, the rest were cookies I might have made through out the year. DH asked for Spicy Nut Slices. I used a store-bought peanut butter cookie mix as the base for fudge tarts. I tried an apricot/walnut/coconut bar cookie that wasn’t “much of a much” as my Mother would have said. I tried a pumpkin cookie that made SEVENTY-TWO COOKIES!!! I have them with nuts, and without, with icing, and without, and some with nuts AND icing! lol I guess this was the year of the pumpkin cookie!
I boxed a lot of those cookies to give away, but there are all together too many of them left. DH has more restraint than I do. I’m getting a lot more sugar in my diet than I usually do.
I did get decorations up around the house. I started with wreaths, swags and garland outside, and then put up two fresh evergreen wreaths inside. I love the scent that I can smell from my recliner. Stockings, mistletoe, the elf that Mother made, scented candles, a candlewick angel my oldest sister made, and other odds and ends that are always a part of our decorations made it up. I have the quilted wallhanging that Mother and I collaborated on hanging in the hallway with a paper-pieced wallhanging that features Christmas fabrics.
We didn’t ignore the traditions, we were just making a few new ones. *S*
I hope your Christmas has been as lovely as mine, and I wish the best for you this coming year!

I knew that weird weather was on it’s way. By the middle of the week I knew it was headed this way, and I hadn’t put up the outdoor decorations yet. Thursday, I said to myself, “I better get it done today while it’s still clear outside.” Friday, I thought, “It’s going to be awful tomorrow, I should really get the wreaths and swags up before it RAINS.”
Well, this morning, I brought in three fresh evergreen wreaths from the garage, added bows, and then hung one on the brick wall perpendicular to the front door, one on the back side of the fireplace, facing the foyer, and the last went up on the face of the fireplace. I love the scent, I chose to go with total simplicity this year, and just added burgundy bows to the greens. In the past I’ve decorated them with dried natural plants, like milkweed pods, lotus pods or teasle. Some years I’ve decorated with silk poinsettias. Other years I’ve used branches of silk berries, but this year I went for simple.
I wasn’t going to decorate the carrage lights this year. What I’d really like to do is buy oversized wreaths made of fresh evergreen, add a bow to the bottom of the wreath, and then slip it over the light but I really feel that’s prohibitively expensive. This year my grocery store was selling really lovely swags with a variety of greens for an exceptionally low price, so I bought three of them, and added bows at the top where everything was wired together. Then I wired them to the bottom of the lights.
The last thing I did was to loop a garland of holly across the top of the door, letting the ends hang down to outline the door. I used burgundy bows at the upper corners to hold the garland in place.
Best of all…..I finished before the rain came in! YEA!!!!
I spent some time today crocheting squares for Share A Square, and I worked on the smaller of the two fake Christmas trees. Last night I took off the string on the top third of the tree. Today, I put on a new strand. I plugged the lights in, and darned if only half of the bulbs lit up! I managed to discover a loose bulb and get the new strand going, but now there’s another old strand that is out. I haven’t been able to find the bad bulb, even using my new handy dandy toy. I finally stopped working on it because it was just too frustrating! Reminds me of a conversation that Joy and I have had before…..”…..those darned lights!”
I feel good about what I got done, but I hope to do more tomorrow. There’s still two weeks to Christmas! *G*

I was very busy today, finishing up paperwork, clearing the decks so that I can focus on decorating the house for Christmas, but after dinner, I just couldn’t avoid the thought that today would have been my mother’s 94th birthday.
It was just incredible that she lived to be 93. She didn’t like the fact that she had outlived most of her friends, and that she was the last of her generation. She told me one day that she didn’t want to live to be 100. I immediately chastised her, focusing on how amazing it would be to have lived an entire century. It took me a while to understand that she was lonely, and she missed those who had lived through the same experiences that had shaped her.
In a way, I understand. I no longer bother to look at “People” magazine. I haven’t a clue who those people are, and don’t care for their fashions. I’m disappointed that WGN 720 AM radio is changing, for the worse. I’ve listened to it for my lifetime, and now someone has decided that they need to take one of the most amazing stations in the nation and make it just like every other faceless station. How very sad to loose a good friend. I’m seriously thinking about deleting all the movie channels from our cable package. I just don’t enjoy the movies they are showing, and again, I have no idea who most of the actors are.
Mother went through that. Even though she and I shared interests, I hadn’t lived through the Depression or World War II. I enjoyed jazz with her, but I didn’t live through the era when it developed. Although I thought I understood, our experiences simply weren’t the same.
Mother was lonely. She wanted to be needed, and we were all busy trying to make life easier for her. Hindsight is very enlightening.
I hope that my mother is with her family and friends, and is at peace.