It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

It seems like only a couple weeks ago we were preparing for Halloween and today I made a trip to Hobby Lobby for a gift for my beautiful 14 year old granddaughter and it's full on Christmas!
As I walked through the aisles of endless Christmas cheer, I realized it had been a long time since I've done any major decorating at my house. The last two years, my effort was to throw a couple Christmas pillows on the sofa and move my 4-foot primitive tree out of its hiding place in the den to an obvious place in the living room. Am I a Scrooge? Of course not!  My bad habit of minimizing decorations probably started two years ago when we had a trip to Las Vegas planned the day after Christmas and it just seemed a little easier to not string Christmas decorations from top to bottom when we were going to be in the midst of packing for our trip on Christmas day.  Besides, my oldest daughter took the lead on Christmas that year and we celebrated at her house on Christmas Eve.  Last year we all everyone went to my beautiful friend and neighbor's house so we could bring Christmas to her instead of having her go out in the weather when she could stay home. And it was good we did because the weather outside was frightful last Christmas Eve.
As I sit here tonight watching Hallmark movies and keeping warm with the new pellet stove my even warmer (and very sexy) landlord installed, I am thinking about heading over to the storage unit tomorrow and climbing through the boxes and over the furniture to retrieve my BIG tree and dozen boxes of decorations to deck the hall...and living room...and kitchen...and dining room...and bedroom with boughs of holly, Christmas trees, snowmen, Santa Claus's, poinsettias and angels. I mean, I do have my primitive tree in its obvious place and it is bearing new decorations, my ceramic Santa is sitting on the stand by the door, I have a snowman sign on my front porch, and I splurged on a new Christmas pillow for the sofa but is it really enough?  I will have to ponder that for the next few days and decide whether I'm going to go all out when Black Friday arrives. Stay tuned...
Let's move along and talk gifts.  I love giving gifts.  I love shopping.  I just don't love shopping on Thanksgiving. There is something inherently wrong about intruding upon Thanksgiving with families to go out and stand in line in front of some damned store to try to get a half-price sweater or a hundred dollar big screen television.  Not to mention taking the employees of the stores away from their families. There are three ways I like to do my gift selection...online with ship to your door service...going to handmade craft shows...or sitting on my sofa making something for the people on my Christmas list.  One year (before I was a published author with deadlines) I made everyone crocheted afghans and loved every minute of it!  I think this year I may take the time to make each person on my list something handmade even if it is just a hand-poured candle.
One thing I got in the mood for last weekend was baking.  Baking is a given for me at the holidays and all winter for that matter.  Last week was snickerdoodles and caramel pecan cookies...a total of 6 dozen...which between 2 people have pretty much been devoured. I think there are 4 of the caramel pecan ones left. Tomorrow, I'm going to make more snickerdoodles and white chocolate macadamia. Which will likely be gone long before Thanksgiving even gets here. I'm going to try these fabulous looking red velvet cheesecake balls for Thanksgiving. Cross your fingers they turn out!
The Hallmark movie playing tonight is A Christmas at Graceland which is filled with Christmas songs.  There is something special and beautiful about Christmas carols and hymns. My favorites include Silent Night, I'll Be Home for Christmas and The First Noel...not to say I don't have others...and I have this lovely Celtic Christmas CD that I particularly enjoy listening to.
Okay, I've spent enough time putting off working on my upcoming new release...which I'm going to tell you a little bit about...it's called One Magick Yule...with a witch who talks to animals and a romance writer who has quit believing in love...watch for a sneak peak on my blog the first week of December and the release date of December 15th. I'm giving you a glimpse of the cover along with  a few of my favorite Christmas memories...and with that, I'm going to wish you all a grace-filled Thanksgiving with your loved ones.