Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours! Peace and joy to our family and friends near and far. We hope you get to spend the day remembering your blessings over the year and enjoying the Christmas spirit.

DH and I enjoyed the midnight service last night at Northside UMC, and we're spending quiet day at home with presents, food, and lots of couch time. We'll get to spend some family time next week with my side once my sister is able to fly down. Looking forward to next week! Happy Holidays!

Ornaments - part 3

Today's ornament theme is kitty ornaments! These are ornaments we picked up to honor our feline friend, Thoth. Here he is in the living room, where he likes to admire our Christmas tree. Thankfully, he has no interest in climbing or eating our tree!

This is a cute one that I found shortly after we adopted Thoth. It's made of wood, and the part you can't see is that the torso is hollow with a jingle bell inside.

This is another cute one that's a Hallmark ornament. I thought it would remind Thoth about how important it is to be a good, angelic kitty so that Santa Paws will bring him good treats on Christmas! :)

Other than working a few days this week, I've been baking cookies and writing holiday cards. I plan on making a nice pork tenderloin for our Christmas dinner, so I need to hunt for a good recipe! Suggestions welcome!

Ornaments - part 2

Today I'm highlighting some gifted ornaments.

This glass house with the "Department 56" hanger was given to us my my MIL when we moved into our first house.

This glass Christmas wreath was given to us by my FIL and SMIL when we moved into our first house as well. I believe they got it in Vermont at a glass factory they visited while on a trip. (The name is on the box that I store it in, but of course, that's already back up in the attic.)

This beautifully cross-stitched and beaded ornament was made by our dear friend, Connie. We had a crafty little group going for awhile back in college, and we did a handmade ornament exchange one year. I still love looking at it when I bring it out every year, and it also reminds me of my dear friends, too!

This is a terra cotta ornament, from Florence, Italy, that our dear friend Cyndi brought back for us after she worked there for several months. He has such a jovial face! It reminds me of all the fun game nights and dinner parties that we've had together over the years, and also a reminder that the season is a time to remember all of the blessings we've had over the last year.

On a bit of a side note, but in keeping with the season, I was so pleased to find out that our family was blessed with a new baby cousin yesterday! Congratulations, An and Eric, and welcome, little Jacob, into our family! A wonderful Christmas present, indeed!

Ornaments - part 1

In honor of Christmas week, I thought I'd blog about some of the meaningful ornaments we have on our Christmas tree. We like to get ornaments to commemorate where we've traveled or things that have happened in our lives. It makes the tree become sort of a way to document and reminisce what we've done over the years. Here are a few of the ornaments from our beginnings - when David and I got married:

This was our first Hallmark commemorative ornament, 2002 for the year we got married. It says "Our First Christmas 2002" with a couple embracing inside a heart. (Aww...isn't that sweet?)

We spent our first Christmas married down in Fort Lauderdale with DH's cousin's family. Highlights of the trip included being with his cousin's kids (who were about 3 and 5 YO at the time - always fun to be around kids at the holidays!), stone crab claws for Christmas Eve dinner, visiting the beach on Christmas Day, sailing out from the intercoastal waterway out into the open sea on Christmas Day, and looking at Christmas lights on palm trees! This orange (which was really hard to find!) reminds us of the great time we had in Florida!

And a little bonus - my Christmas cactus started to bloom this week. Here's the first bloom, all opened up today!

I hope all of you out there have a wonderful and safe Christmas! More ornaments to come tomorrow!

O Tannenbaum

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!

We got our live tree up this weekend! It's petite, but beautiful - I think DH found the perfect tree. We were able to reach the top of it (without a stool), and all of our meaningful ornaments fill in the tree beautifully without even having to bring out the generic metallic balls to fill in the blank spots! I was totally prepared to not have a Douglas fir after DH warned me that he thought most places would not be carrying them this year (thought he had heard about some growning problem with them), but thank you, Home Depot, for still having a small section of them. We've always gotten a Douglas fir. I guess what I like about them (over Fraser firs) is that they are fuller, you can hide the lights better in them, and it looks more like the artificial tree I had growing up. It's a tradition I am pleased we were able to keep. O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum! Du kannst mir sehr gefallen!

Kicking off the Holiday Season

DH and I attended Red and Green Scene last night at Mason Murer Fine Art Gallery, the AIA Atlanta holiday party which was in partnership with USGBC, ASID, IIDA, and ASHRAE Atlanta this year. When I bought tickets about a week ago, there were about 400+ people attending. At the party last night, I heard there were over 700! We had a great time visiting with professionals, friends, vendors, acquaintances, and even met a few new folks. The food was pretty good, although probably a little overly elaborate for heavy hors d' oeuvres (but hey, I feel I got my money's worth), and the lines for food and drinks seemed to be pretty long at times, but hey, they were serving a *bunch* of people. In light of the fact that my office, and probably many others out there, decided to conserve and not host fancy holiday parties for their employees and/or clients this year, we enjoyed our one "fancy" party of the year. Entertainment by the band, Kingsized, along with Two Dames Aflame Burlesque Troupe was great as well as fun! There was a party photographer as well as other friends with cameras at the event, so hopefully I'll have some better ones of me and David soon. That's us with our friend Vanessa above, who is a rep for a flooring company. I hope that all of you out there have a fun, safe, and memorable holiday season this year!

A special HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dear little sister, Lena, today! Love you!