Do you need any help getting in the mood for the upcoming Christmas holidays? Do you want to see where Christmas has “exploded” and holiday cheer is spewed everywhere? Well I have a post for you 😉
John and I were recently in Las Vegas for his poker tournament and we stopped one day at the Bellagio Hotel’s Conservatory and Gardens where they had outdone themselves on Christmas decorations.
Here we are, overwhelmed with holiday cheer 😉
I don’t mean to make fun of it, the display was actually very lovely and the Bellagio’s team did a spectacular job with the design and decorations.
I got a kick out of the miniature train set circling one of the Christmas trees on display. It reminded of the electric train set we got from my grandfather that always chugged around our Christmas tree when I was a kid.
After touring the gardens we popped into the over the top Christmas Shop at the Bellagio where many items cost a mortgage payment.
But they were beautiful to look at and we had fun browsing the very crowded shop.
I know, I know, but a week or so ago they were taking down the Christmas tree display at my favorite library (see my 2023 post O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Trees… for images of their awesome 2023 holiday season display) and I just had to run around and take photos of the 2024 themed Christmas tree displays before they all came down!
So here we go:
In case there are any you couldn’t figure out, they are in order: Beetlejuice, Winnie the Pooh, Super Mario, Garfield, Cat in the Hat, Charlotte’s Web, Curious George, How to Train Your Dragon, Little House on the Prarie, and Indiana Jones.
I remember seeing library staff in November setting up the trees. A lot of work and creativity goes into these trees each year. There were many more trees than I share above but many of them had been taken down by early January.
I do love my library and I appreciate they do special things like this:
And in the Women’s restroom they have free feminine products for the community:
The library is such a wonderful place!
Postscript
Just a little beginning of the year silliness: John and I love to go to the store HomeGoods and wander around looking at stuff we don’t need.
Well the other week we found these ridiculous items (my apologies if you already have these in your home or want to add them to your home) – a giant box of fried chicken sculpture, and a giant stack of pizza slice sculpture. We laughed pretty hard at these sights!
Also if you look closely at the image above, you will see on the floor a giant sculpture of a stack of Oreo cookies. Please note I used the term “sculpture” very loosely – ha!
“Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation.”
We spent the week of Christmas (12/22 – 12/27/24) in Miami, Florida with my family. One of my stepsons joined us along with my siblings, their kids and my sister-in-law. We came from Oregon, Virginia, Delaware and Denver to meet up for Christmas week!
Here is John on his way to get our rental car in the Miami airport with the artificial Christmas tree we brought along on his back!
John and I rented a couple loft condos in a converted former industrial building so the 8 of us would have plenty of space; and made our condo the main Christmas area with the tree, stockings and meals served there. I put on a fireplace video with Christmas music from YouTube and hung the stockings on the entertainment center for ambiance – ha!
Here’s what our condo looked like with a view of Miami’s skyline:
John made several wonderful meals and it was so good to sit down with the family from all over the country and share his yummy cooking:
I spent an evening on Espanola Way in South Beach with my siblings and their kids wandering around and it was magical!
John got to go on several rented bike rides along South Beach with his son Z who is an avid cyclist in Portland, Oregon (they didn’t appear to take any photos).
Miami was beautiful and decorated for the holidays:
I got to spend a morning wandering around downtown Miami with my sister and visiting the really lovely Brickell City Centre shopping area.
We stopped for some amazing pastries at the Rosetta Bakery.
Our family was so sweet and the day after Christmas they threw a surprise party in the afternoon for John and I at the other condo to celebrate our love and our commitment to family. They decorated the table with my favorite – sunflowers!
My brother, sister and stepson all made amazing speeches and John and I got pretty choked up! It was a very special afternoon.
On our last day in Miami, before heading to the airport, a couple of us went to Coral Gables and spent time in a delightful independent bookstore – Books & Books. It has a cafe, a bar, and endless rooms of books! I didn’t want to leave but eventually we had to head to the airport – ha!
I loved the cozy looking windows looking out to the outside dining at the bookstore.
The week flew by fast and we didn’t get to do all the things we planned (like go to the beach!) but it was a very special Christmas!
Hope your holidays were wonderful, I’ll be catching up on my blogging buddies’ posts I’ve missed in the near future 🙂
There were 7 of us for Christmas Eve and we were going to make do with our 6 person seating kitchen table, with one person (#7) either crammed in or sitting at the kitchen counter.
We don’t have a formal dining room, just an open room when you first enter the front door which we turned into the library (previously it was a “sitting room”).
Well I came up with the semi “hare-brained” idea on December 23 that we should go buy an actual dining room table and put it into the library. It would serve as both a library table (it’s always been my dream to have one) and a dining table when needed.
So off we went to IKEA on 12/23, which was surprisingly empty so close to the Christmas holiday, and bought a table which seats 8 (but you could fit 10 at the table).
image credit – ikea.com
Yes John could have built a table in his woodshop but we figured it would cost the same or more to build from scratch a 92 1/2″ x 39 3/8 ” table (234 cm x 100 cm approximately) and he wouldn’t have it ready for December 24th!
We got the table home and before you know it we had it set up and made up for Christmas Eve (including Christmas Crackers):
And the table worked perfectly for our Christmas Eve dinner of 7 people (we used the loveseat in the library as seating for 2 of the 7 people; and the chairs are the existing kitchen table chairs):
In addition to candles on the table, I set up tea lights on the bookshelves in the library for a nice atmosphere during our festive dining.
And the two dogs that attended (Mike and Ajax) enjoyed foraging under the table and begging for food:
Christmas morning I was having some quiet time sitting at the new table in the library having tea and looking at library books with Mike the Miniature Schnauzer…
…and I thought: this table needs a table runner! (And a new larger rug under it…I am looking into one of those Ruggable rugs that remove from their pad and are machine washable).
Luckily I had in my stash a group of blocks my friend Wendy gave me (see post Quilter Distractions: Good Mail filled with “Taupe”) from a quilt she made for a magazine article/pattern she wrote for October 2010 edition of The Quilt Life called SuperSymmetry.
It is not enough blocks to make a quilt but it was enough to start a table runner!
I used up all the blocks Wendy sent and I am only at about a 6 foot table runner. The table is over 7 1/2 feet long so I am going to have to piece more blocks. Luckily Wendy sent me a bunch of coordinating fabric scraps!
I plan to add some type of thin border to the pieced blocks to float them. I don’t plan to make the table runner very wide as I just want to run the center of the table.
I’ll update you on the progress.
Oh and I’ll close this post with something sweet I saw this morning on my walk.
We have a lot of deer in the area so there are a lot of “deer crossing” warning signs as crossing deer (who like to randomly cross the street when you least expect it) are a dangerous traffic hazard.
Well someone decorated one of the “deer crossing” signs with a red nose (like Rudolph the Red Noses Reindeer!) to make it festive!
This bit of whimsy gave me a huge smile on my walk!
I’ve been working on some handmade holiday gifts so not much to post right now, but I thought I’d get you in the holiday spirit with a collection of delightful Christmas trees!
My beloved local library (yes after 4.5+ years in Colorado I have finally fallen completely and madly in love with a library...I thought no library could replace my beloved Deschutes Public Library in Bend, Oregon but finally I am able to love again!) has a delightful and whimsical display of Christmas trees inspired by literary classics and popular culture.
There are 32 decorated Christmas trees are scattered around the first and second levels of the library and are called the Forest of Stories. I tried to see every tree during my weekly visit to the library; and here are the trees that I found most intriguing:
BARBIE TREE
NANCY DREW TREE
Oh how I loved reading Nancy Drew books as a kid!
THEHUNGER GAMES TREE
JURASSIC PARK TREE
If you’ve only seen the movie and never read the book, I highly recommend reading Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton! This is where I first learned about “Chaos Theory”.
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’STREE
Here’s a terrifying movie I do not recommend (and I like scary movies). We went to see it a couple weeks ago with John’s granddaughter and son who have played the video game. It was disturbing and a movie I never care to watch again, ick!
WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS TREE
A magical book from my childhood I will not forget!
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES TREE
THE NIGHT CIRCUS TREE
I highly recommend this delightful book! I keep a copy in my home library.
TREASURE ISLAND TREE
STUDIO GHIBLI TREE
MAYA ANGELOU TREE
Beautiful tribute!
TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW TREE
I’ve heard many good things about this book by Gabrielle Zevin. A friend gave me their copy and it is sitting in my queue to read.
BRIDGERTON TREE
Complete with “Lady Whistledown” gossip sheets! I’ve never read the books but did enjoy the Netflix television series which was sort of mindless but juicy entertainment!
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA TREE
HG WELLS TREE
His novel The Time Machine (1895) is quite the science fiction classic!
There were a lot more trees (32 in total as I mentioned earlier in this post) but this post would go on forever if I shared all the photos I took! I chatted with the library staff and they said they had so much fun decorating the trees!
OUR TREE
Speaking of Christmas trees, here is our set up for this holiday season. We put and decorated our right after Thanksgiving:
Can you spot the Miniature Schnauzer (Mike) staring at me?
Let’s zoom in closer…
Our Christmas tree is not even closely creatively decorated like those trees at my local library; but we do have some fun additions to our tree to this year.
Last year during a holiday together, we had our guests including John’s sons and granddaughter, decorate pre-made/printed ornaments with “bling” and colorful markers. We had such a fun time doing it. Everyone signed their ornaments and left them behind with us.
Well now we get to display them on our tree each year! Every time I look at them I smile and remember the laughter and joy decorating them!
Our group was most adults and it was fun to watch the adults have so much fun coloring and decorating simple cardboard ornaments. We had so much fun doing it we are going to do it again this year!
I’ll close this post with the reference for the title of this post. “O Christmas Tree” is the English version of the German Christmas song “O Tannebaum”.
Let’s transport you back to my childhood Christmas for a moment and my parents are playing Nat King Cole’s Christmas album on the record player…
If you are new to this blog, here is a little background – in December 2018 my husband died. In December 2017 my beloved mother in law died. In December 2017 my greatest dog love of all time, Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer died. My late husband’s birthday is in early December and our wedding anniversary is in late December.
So as you can imagine December is always a challenging month for me. Christmas was always my most favorite holiday (I enjoyed planning for Christmas starting in June or earlier); but my husband died 12 days before Christmas 2018. To add to the unfortunate event, I found him on the floor next to the Christmas tree.
I know this seems like a very morbid opening for a blog post but I just wanted to provide background/perspective for the rest of this post, not to scare you away from reading any further!
After making it through the 3rd anniversary of my late husband’s passing, I realized that I wanted to “take back Christmas” and I was tired of being unrelentingly sad during December. Christmas was my favorite holiday and I needed a way to enjoy it again and not associate it with one of the darkest times of my life.
So we got a Christmas tree and I decorated for the holidays more than I’ve done since my husband passed.
A got a little creative on how to make the TV more festive by adding holiday bunting…
My partner John and I decorated the tree with the collection of ornaments we kept from our previous lives and some new ones we’ve purchased together. Most of my ornaments are schnauzer themed…
Whole lot of schnauzers trimming the tree
John also hung Christmas lights on the front of the house and I placed a Christmas wreath on the front door for the first time together.
In addition to making the house holiday festive, I also did a bunch of holiday baking in anticipation of having John’s immediate family over for Christmas Eve (Originally we had planned to go to the East Coast of the US to spend Christmas with my family, but there is some virus raging…have you heard of it???).
I made Molasses Crinkle cookies, Crispy Chocolate Chip cookies, Lemon Squares, and a Pumpkin Roll.
Here is the messy kitchen during my baking fest:
Here are the cookies I made:
Here are the yummy lemon squares I made:
You’ll see one of the lemon squares above has a bite taken out of it. Well I had to make sure it was not poisonous!
I used my cookbooks for the cookies and lemon squares but for the Pumpkin Roll I used one of my blogging buddy’s (In Diane’s Kitchen) recipe which had awesome directions and worked out very well: Libby’s Pumpkin Roll
Here is the pumpkin roll in progress (this is the second time I’ve made it and I am getting better at the whole jelly roll process):
And the Pumpkin Roll ready to serve our holiday guests:
Here is the whole Christmas Eve dessert spread which includes a bakery bought Lemon Meringue pie and store bought handmade marshmallows:
We did have an actual Christmas Eve meal before the dessert (smile). I set a festive table along with English style Christmas Crackersat each place setting. Of course I forgot to take a photo of the holiday table but use your imagination.
I’ll close this post with a picture of my partner John getting ready to make the gravy for the Prime Rib he made for Christmas Eve dinner, while wearing the paper crown he got from his Christmas Cracker:
The Christmas holidays are upon us and as one of my partner’s Christmas gifts, I decided to recycle several of his old T-shirts that no longer fit/were worn out into throw pillows for his “Man Cave” in our daylight basement.
Here is the first one I worked on – I used flannel to border the T-shirt (which I added fusible interfacing to first) and for the envelope back:
Here is the next pillow I worked on (my partner is a Whiskey connoisseur) and I had trouble focusing while making the pillow because it was so outrageously funny and so unlike his personality:
He was pleasantly surprised by the pillows (I gave them to him early so he could enjoy them for the holiday season). Here they are set up in the “Man Cave” (where we also like to sit and watch movies):
Postscript
We also have our Schnauzer-themed Christmas tree up. I am lucky to have another Schnauzer-aficionado in my life. Yes we did include his ornaments too but the tree is “strongly Schnauzer” 🙂
Every tree needs a “Schnauzer Angel” topper, right?
Thursday evening we had a quiet evening by the tree wrapping presents, drinking hot cocoa and eating grilled cheese sandwiches before the holiday madness begins.
Now it is holiday parties, out of town family members arriving for a visit; and then hosting 25+ people at the house for Christmas eve (my partner is the oldest of 7 children and hosts Christmas eve dinner for his family and extended family).
Quite the different Christmas holiday than I had in 2018…and I am feeling very blessed and cozy.
tierneycreates 