Hey, it’s my birthday today! Figured I might as well take a few minutes for a fun Blogmas catch up this afternoon. I’m just a few topics behind. Work tomorrow and Wednesday so hoping for a blog visiting catch up on Thursday or Friday.

First though, good news! I found the missing bin. Husband said he looked through all of them. However, I went back to go through them one by one and……why are men blind? Why? Oh well, it’s found. Stockings are across the back of the couch and the wreath is on the front door.

I’m just going to do a brief (well, you all know me, I’ll try to be brief) section on each topic.

Party Food Ideas

We actually have a Christmas party to attend this year but I’m not sure if we’re supposed to take food. Haven’t made it that far in the planning as it’s later like the 21st or something. Our go to party food/appetizers to share are:

1. little smokies wrapped in either crescent rolls OR wrapped in bacon (better option)
2. Cheese ball (So easy: 1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix to 2 eight oz cream cheese blocks, blend well, form into ball, and roll in chopped pecans) and crackers
3. Pick up a vegetable platter from store on the way

Christmas Markets/Fairs

We have these but unless I go it alone, I usually don’t make it. Right now there’s a big Hallmark themed one happening because of the movie. Maybe I’ll get there, not sure.

Favorite Family Traditions

Newer ones:

• Going to the candlelight service at the church on Christmas Eve. Usually because J is playing, haven’t heard anything for this year but even if he doesn’t play, I’m still going to insist we go.
• Brother making spaghetti for Christmas dinner (so much easier for him, he gets to visit and since I love Italian food, I’m all in favor!)

Older one:  The boys always get Christmas pajamas and book on Christmas Eve. This year I’m at a loss with the books and they may be getting gift cards to Half Price Books with their pajamas. We’ll see.

Decorations/Ornaments

I love all our Christmas ornaments and decorations as most have special meanings. We’d be here all day talking about them. We have ornaments that were on our parents’ trees, ornaments the kids made, ornaments that reflect special events, gifted ornaments, and of course, those special Hallmark ones. So no real theme to our living room tree.

However, this year I did splurge a bit (with many Menards rebates) and buy myself a tree for our bedroom. I plan to give it a theme of blue/green and natural to try and tie in our green Christmas bedding and blue bedroom. A not so great shot of it as I had to edit out a lot of mess:

It’s a 4 1/2 foot prelit tree with a timer and a remote with many functions. Of course, I prefer the warm white lights. (I’ll try to share a better shot of the tree in an upcoming post)

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Lots of topics here but let’s end with a decorations question. How many trees do you have in your house? I’d have one in every room if I could get away with it.

Worked longer than I expected yesterday. There’s a surprise, not really. So, 2 topics for Blogmas today.

Starting off with the topic from yesterday.

Christmas Movies

I’ve decided to once again watch a Christmas movie every day this season. Started off on Sunday with a new one.

Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story

I even had to explain to my husband this movie is not the story of the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce romance. This was your typical cheesy Hallmark movie. By the way, the Hallmark corporate headquarters are in KC.

The story was cute but of course, I was more thrilled by recognizing places. The entire filming took place not very far from our house at all. I’ve been to many of those locations (the names in the movie aren’t the actual names of the places). And the home in the movie belongs to the family of a child who attended our preschool! I even spotted the sweet family as extras.

Also, if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll understand my annoyance at my husband’s under appreciation when I went and pointed to this ornament hanging on our tree as they talked about in the movie. 

Sometime after that, he was done watching. I don’t think he was the target audience. After the movie, I got caught in a loop and also finished watching some movie I’d watched while waiting for the premier about a woman going back to the 90’s. Cute but forgettable. And one called The Magic Stocking. I’m sure I’ll watch a few more Hallmark movies before Christmas.

My seasonal favorites

So far of those, I’ve watched Elf (probably my very favorite), Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone. And of course, I’ll make time for the animated classics like Rudolph, The Grinch, and Frosty.

For someone who doesn’t do well with scary, it’s probably a bit odd but I do love the genre of Holiday scary (not gory). Krampus is one I have to watch every single year! Also, Gremlins. And I’m hoping the crazy movie There’s Something in the Barn is still on Netflix. In the animated category, I read a theory recently that The Polar Express movie could count as holiday horror. What do you think? My kids never wanted to watch it with me, maybe that was why?

Christmas Music

I was just glancing at my Christmas notebook to see if I put a clue to the missing tub there. No luck. Just lots of advice I apparently ignored for this season. However, I just read this note:

Christmas music on the classical station is better!

So perhaps I’ll switch over to the classical station when I start running errands and such later. I do prefer the classical Christmas as it helps current artists from messing up my Christmas classics.

There really should be a law that the only version of Holly Jolly Christmas played is the one by Burl Ives. Bet you can’t guess my favorite Christmas song after that statement? Ha. Not a huge favorite but the same rule applies to Last Christmas. Only acceptable version is by Wham. Taylor’s version of that one is an automatic skip/channel change.

I do enjoy some of the newer Christmas songs though I can’t think of a single title at the moment.

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What’s your favorite Christmas movie? Do you have a favorite Christmas song? Are you a Grinch like me and have songs you just can’t stand that require an immediate skip/channel change?

I love Christmas decorations! However, my enthusiasm for putting up the decor isn’t shared with the rest of the household. Not a lot of pictures in this post as everything is sort of a messy work in progress right now.

Husband has the not until after Thanksgiving rule. Annoying but I mostly abide. This year, he did agree we could put the tree up prior to Thanksgiving. Probably because I was eyeing new Christmas trees. Our prelit tree is down to one random part in the middle that actually lights.

In the end, after looking and looking, we simply bought lights to put on our tree. And my handy husband did some sort of Christmas magic so the old lights from the tree don’t light but the new ones do and I can still turn it on and off with the foot button. A week of crawling under the tree to plug and unplug the light cord gave me a new appreciation for that button!

Indoor decorating:

As I said, we wait until after Thanksgiving. So, I did hold off on decorating the tree until this past weekend. Also have out the Nativity set from when we first married.

Still need to put out the one that belonged to my mother. This year space seems very limited. And they all keep wanting to blame my extra plants. Not true (maybe true). I’ll figure something out though as I usually do.

I’m waiting for help on the one part of the decor I can’t manage on my own, the greenery over the kitchen doorway. Should see if they’ll do that for me tonight.

I also like to add touches in the bedrooms and bathrooms. The Christmas shower curtain is up and the bedding is on the bed. I’ve moved on from a new tree for the living room to thinking about a small 4 foot tree for our bedroom. Not sure I’ll manage but I can “see” how it would look so nice and cozy there.

And tomorrow, I have plans with girlfriends to go tour holiday decorated homes….my husband better look out! Ha.

Outdoor decorating:

They used to be nice and put out a lighted reindeer and sleigh for me but not anymore. We’d inherited some old inflatables from my in-laws (from when my late mil was still with us) but they aged to the point we thought Santa might scare children so no more of those either.

Some years I also get a little real Christmas tree like pictured above for the front. I always try to plant them after the season. Unfortunately,  the drought the last couple years wiped all my little planted Christmas trees out.

I did get some metal picks from Hobby Lobby last year and stuck into my outdoor planters but that’s about it for our outside.

Now, I just keep myself content by driving around awarding imaginary blue ribbons to the best decorated homes I see.

Lost Christmas decor!

Here’s a new one. We’ve somehow lost an entire tub of Christmas decor. Can’t find the wreath for the front door (most pictures are from a couple of years back). Can’t find the Christmas stockings. Never mind getting coal, they aren’t going to get anything if I can’t find those. Ever lose your Christmas decor? It’s got to be here somewhere. New after Christmas goal, re-labeling and organizing the Christmas tubs.

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When do you decorate for Christmas? Do you go full house or are you a stick to the main room with the tree kind of person?

Well, I should be off here to go search for the lost bins of Christmas. Wish me luck and don’t forget to visit Tamy over at Chasing My Life to read all about Blogmas. 

Since I missed yesterday and have a busy tomorrow, thought I’d just tackle 3 Blogmas topics at once today.

Elf on the Shelf

We do have one but Buddy is usually lost in a snowstorm and tends to arrive late. That’s my solution to not having to think of so many days of things.

Thankfully, this wasn’t the trend when my boys were younger. We didn’t get our Elf on the Shelf until J was in 5th grade and talking about the one in his classroom. And we’ve never really followed it in the traditional book “he’s spying on you and taking notes for Santa” way. For us, Buddy was just a bit of fun mischief and we did it more like a scavenger hunt. Sometimes, he also brought funt treats like special holiday cereal.

J used to  think that he moved on his own but now everyone knows. We still keep up the fun tradition of hiding him around the house though. G has always thought the elf is a bit creepy.

If my kids were young, I’d go with the Kindness Elves instead. I think that’s such a great concept!

Christmas Cards

Sigh, I miss and do not miss this tradition if I’m perfectly honest. I love the idea of Christmas cards and absolutely loved decorating the kitchen doorway with them. However, it seems each year we get fewer.

And not to be obnoxious here as I love seeing the photos but really what do you do with those photo cards after Christmas?

Full confession, I’m bad about sending them. Always start out with the best of intentions….and then, time just slips away. Plus, the price of postage might do some serious budget damage if I send all the cards I want to send. I do usually make an effort, however, to send them to family members and people I know might be lonely this time of year or that really do enjoy getting the cards.

Will I send all the Christmas cards this year? It just depends on time, money, and my mood. If you send me a card will I be thrilled and honored you took the time to think of me? Absolutely!

Favorite Childhood Memories

While we’re speaking of cards, one of my memories is of my mom making gift tags from the front of old Christmas cards. And she’d save those tags each year as well. It was always fun seeing a special gift tag on a present. We sometimes thought certain tags were on better presents.

Not a childhood memory but a fun one for me is the first Christmas I spent with my husband’s family and their confusion at the tags on my gifts as they looked for the to/from stickers. Turns out not everyone made those gift tags from old cards. I use stickers now myself.

As the youngest child in the family (with an age gap), it was often just my parents and myself on Christmas Eve. And I remember my mom would always let me open one present of my choice that night (as we did the big family Christmas on the day) sometimes gently guiding me away from choosing my “big” present. I also remember many Christmas Eves where we’d travel over the big bridge (as a child it was big) to visit my grandparents over in Kansas. Waking up early and digging through my Christmas stocking. Big loud Christmas dinners with all my siblings on Christmas day.

And of course, I remember the Christmas morning where Santa brought the Donnie and Marie stage and dolls!

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Thinking as I write on these topics that maybe I’ll ask my young adult children what memories they have of things. Might be fun to know. Are you an Elf on the Shelf participant? Christmas card sender? What are you favorite holiday memories?