It's May?!

 I have been absent from this blog for months. It's not that I'm not interested, it's that there is a lot going on right now (which you already know if you read my other blog). I'm not going to repeat it all here, but I will say that with the arrival of May my Christmas Spirit has been revived.

This month I'm focusing on finishing a stocking I'm stitching for my DIL's neice. I won't even tell you how long ago I started this stocking, but I'll give you a hint - Pre-Covid. Yep, I feel awful but I WILL complete it in time for Christmas this year.

Have your thoughts begun to turn to the Holiday Season?

Christmas Time's a'Comin'!

I was inspired the other day so I laid out my December blog posts. Now to actually start writing them.

I'm assuming Hobby Lobby must have received most of their Christmas merchandise as I got an email from them that all Christmas is now 40% off. Need to get over there... more for inspiration than to purchase. I have so much Christmas stuff that this year I really want to focus on re-purposing what I have.

I've made a start on my gift purchases. I'm eager to finish one grandchild so I can start to make his/her snowman. I went to the Teacher's store and bought rolls of while craft paper. They come in three different lengths so I'm hoping there won't be a lot of waste when I start wrapping the boxes. It did occur to me the other day to wonder where I will store the assembled snowmen until time to put the tree up. But I decided to worry about that another day.

I'm very optimistic about my stocking stitching this year. I have two stockings to go and I think there's every chance that I will finish both of them in time for Christmas. Hallelujah!

In the meantime, I have a summer cold accompanied as usual by  Laryngitis and the forecast is calling for temps around 115 degrees the middle of this week...

Christmas Time's a'Comin'

Easter is over. I'm decorating my house for the summer months which means my Patriotic decor. And my thoughts are turning toward Christmas.

I'm laying out a plan for my Christmas in July posts. I'm hoping to come up with some interesting new ideas this year. Hope being the operative word!

On my last visit to Hobby Lobby they seemed to have most of their Patriotic decor out on the floor. You know what that means... Fall and Christmas boxes will start appearing on the tops of the shelves sometime before June 1st!

I'm stitching away on the stockings I need to make this year. And I do mean need. I'm committed to stitching six stockings and I'm only about 2/3 through the first one. I'm trying desperately not to get discouraged at this early stage.

On the positive front, my Christmas gift shopping is going well. I have a couple of gifts for one of my daughters and bought a grandson's large gift already. We're re-doing our closet so I plan to have a gift corner in it to help with storage. With 14 in our immediate family and 21 of us including the extended family storage is becoming a real challenge!

Is it Just Me, or Are Christmas Blogs on the Endangered Species List?

So I was looking at my Christmas blog today when I realized that several of my favorite blogs hadn't posted for a year. I clicked on each one of them and discovered to my sorrow that they indeed hadn't posted since 2013. I deleted them from my list and then went in search of some new (at least to me) Christmas blogs to follow. They are hard to find.

Being the author of a Christmas blog, I know how it is to have great intentions of updating the blog regularly, but then getting caught up in real life and neglecting it. I probably think about Christmas at least every other day, if not every day, but just don't take the time to blog. Also, right now, it's hard for me to even keep up with my every day blog because of limited computer time. That will be resolved soon as we're going to purchase a tablet and I can use it to blog on. I just hope I can figure out how to insert photos with it. Oh well. I'll worry about that when the time comes.

So, back to the subject at hand. Do you guys read any terrific Christmas blogs that I should know about? I'd love your suggestions. I'm hoping that the disappearance of so many of my favorites will serve as motivation to me to blog more often here.

I'm currently working on my Christmas in July ideas. Can you believe it will be here in just two months? Goodness gracious, but time is flying by.

Music, Books, Movies (When They Saw the Star)

I was reading one of my Christmas books from this past season and I had a moment of inspiration. The book was talking about Christmas carols and how we're so used to them we don't really concentrate on the beauty and meaning of the lyrics. So true. This thought led me to think about my Christmas blog and how sparse my posts are between January and May, sometimes between January and July, sometimes... well you get the point. So I decided this would be a great time to focus on Christmas music, movies, and books.

So starting today, when I read a Christmas book I'll share it with you. When I watch a Christmas movie, I'll share it with you. And I'm also going to share Christmas carol lyrics so we can appreciate their beauty and message.

I'm going to begin with the lyrics to a song that I rarely hear, but is one of my favorites:

When They Saw the Star

O'er mountains and valleys it led them each night
A star of most radiant light
Three Wise Men rejoiced as they journeyed afar
to behold such a beautiful star

When they saw the star they rejoiced with great joy
When they saw the star they rejoiced
When they saw the star they rejoiced with great joy
they rejoiced with exceeding great joy

Others saw the star but they followed it not
To them it would come and would pass
The Wise men kept trusting with all of their hearts
That the star would find the Baby at last

Where Am I?

Normally this time of year would find me posting every few days about how I'm preparing for the holidays. This year I have a major distraction. We bought a new home and moved! We got the keys on 10/25 and have been focused since then on getting out of our rental and into the house. Plus working on appraisals seven days a week.

The house was built in 1998 and while that wasn't THAT long ago, it has been neglected. Big time neglected. We are pulling up over 1000 sq ft of carpet and laying wood floor. Every single room needs to be painted. Many of the lights are out. Big deal, you say. Well it is a big deal when you're dealing with 10 ft tall ceilings. The stove had to be replaced. (done) The pool fence needs to be put up. The plumbing in the laundry room was jacked up, causing a major flood in the laundry room and the garage. Thank goodness my youngest son is a plumber!!

Anyway, I'm not complaining. I'm explaining why I'm not writing pithy Christmas posts.

My goal is to be able to start posting regularly by 11/23. I hope.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying reading your Christmas posts!

See you in a couple of weeks...

Changes

The new year is approaching and it's time for change. I want to make a commitment to updating this blog every month... at least once a month. I've thought about assigning myself the task of updating it on the 24th or 25th each month. Or maybe the 1st or 15th of the month. I've contemplated assigning an element of Christmas to each month and posting about that. I've thought of lots of ideas. But none of them have really wowed me. So... my decision is to wing it. I may post on a certain day of the month, or I may post when the creative urge strikes. I may have a month that has a theme, or each month may be a hodgepodge. I may (gasp) accidentally skip a month, but I'm not planning to.

The best I can say is please stay tuned. Maybe by the time Autumn rolls around again I'll have a firm plan. Or maybe I'll still be winging it. Either way, I appreciate all of you who stop in to visit. I appreciate your comments and encouragement. I enjoy reading your blogs and am looking forward to being inspired by you in 2013.

I'm not ready to give up on this blog. I'm just ready for change...

Happy New Year!

Followers

When I first started blogging in October 2009, I added the "Followers" gadget to my blog. But I'm going to be brutally honest here... only a few people followed me. I got discouraged and removed the gadget. The past few months I've had several people comment that they want to follow me. So, I put the "Followers" gadget back up today.

I follow many blogs. I don't always sign up as a follower, but once I put your blog on my blog roll, you can rest assured that I read it every time you post. I guess I need to get better about signing up as a follower... after all, I don't want to be part of discouraging a fellow blogger!

As always, the comments you leave are so appreciated. That's the thing about blogging that I just love... we may not meet face-to-face, but we get to know each other and can count each other as friends.

So... Please, if you enjoy reading this blog (or my personal/stitching blog - Being Grammy) join in as a follower.

Thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to encourage me to add followers to my blogs!

Welcome to my Newest Blog!

I love all things Christmas. I've had a Christmas Corner tab on my personal blog for over a year now, but somehow it just doesn't fill the need I have to write about Christmas. The natural progression was to start a Christmas blog. Join me as I see how this evolves. If it doesn't, then I'll delete it!