It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

For a variety of reasons, it was a struggle getting into the holiday spirit this year.  At first, everything seemed to be such a chore.  We eased into the holiday spirit with his and hers Lego Advent calendars (City for me and Star Wars for him).  The decorations were soon pulled out from storage, but the boxes remained untouched, as Susie Q's recent mischievous misdeeds had us wondering whether it would be safe to even put up a Christmas tree this year?!?  Thanks to the magic of an ex-pen, the Christmas tree went up and stayed up as my two girls were total angels!  What Christmas season is complete without some homemade Irish Cream!  Mmmm!  

Deck the Halls!

Then there was our annual Christmas ornament tradition that we hadn't even started!  We started with some simple round wooden desks that Doug cut, sanded and stained red and green.  He passed them off for me to embellish with metallic Sharpie markers, where I created a variety of mandalas.  I actually enjoyed the meditative and creative nature of each unique design (all 20 of them!!)

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree!

The Christmas crafting fun continued as I worked on some secret hand-dyed Christmas gifts for family and friends including t-shirts, socks, boxers/boxer briefs, scarfs, handkerchiefs and even bandanas for some special four-legged friends!  

Santa's Workshop and Special Elves

Hippie Holidays from Susie Q, Panda, my mother, brother, his canine companion Helix and Doug!!

And Santa delivered some special Christmas gifts to us as well!  It is essential that we always have a back up Heinz ketchup on deck for Doug.  So he got a back up Heinz ketchup ornament for the tree, a fun t-shirt and an industrial sized container of ketchup...truly a Christmas miracle!!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town!  Ketchup, Ketchup and more Ketchup for Doug!

And I received a fun assortment of quilting fabrics and notions...

All I Want for Christmas...

All in all, we survived this Christmas/Holiday season...and have 360+ days to start preparing more for next year's festivities!!