These are the top twelve things I do to get “in the mood” for Christmas:
1) I light a scented candle by my desk while I’m working – usually winter nuts and spices, or warm mince pies, or sticky gingerbread! My brother gave me these lovely candles and I adore the smell of them. The trouble with number two and three candle is, they make me feel hungry (so then I go to item two).
2) I enjoy a mince pie with my mid-morning coffee!
3) I hang my Santa card holder in the hall so as I come in through the front door each day I can see all the lovely cards we’ve received from friends and family wishing us a happy time; they fill me with a warm glow.
4) I hang a garland around the door into the drawing room – so it is like wondering through into a winter wonderland as you enter the room. (Except it’s cosy and warm inside!) It is festooned with gold glass baubles and red silk ribbons and looks very pretty!
5) I put out a nut net for the birds – it’s Christmas for them too! The Robin is my favourite! How did you guess?
6) I create a beautiful winter floral display of flowers for the drawing room – not only do they look good but the perfume is heady too. I don’t always bother with a tree – especially if we are out and about a lot.
7) I stand a bowl of Christmas pot-pouri in front of the fire at night – the heat of the fire brings out a lovely smell of cinnamon and cloves. Mmmmmm …
I hang the Christmas stockings on the hearth in anticipation of a visit from Santa – you’re never too old! He always leaves me something so I can’t be all bad!!!!!
9) I watch every slushy sloppy Christmas movie on TV! Even the ones I’ve seen a hundred times before! And I still cry at some of them.
10) I eat a chocolate from my advent calendar daily (this is my favourite Crimble preparation!)
11) I play Christmas music CD’s in the background – really awful stuff sometimes like Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody or Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie. OK sometimes I play tasteful too – I’ve got a wonderful FM classic carols disc sung by Kings College Cambridge; it’s beautiful.
12) I phone lots of people I haven’t spoken to for ages and wish them a joyful Christmas and a Happy New Year!
What do you do?
(Do please leave me a link if you post on “getting in the mood”)
Alfie: Born (approximately) 1st September 2008 (from Cat's Protection rescue centre)
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You sure have small robins over there, in England, girl! I thought it was a finch! We only have them for a few months out of the year, because the arctic blasts of a prairie winter just don’t appeal to songbirds.
Yes, in the summer, they’ll start chirping anywhere from about 3:30 am – 4:00 am, for about two hours, until the magpies take over. They’ll cackle back and forth for about an hour, and then the crows will move in, which, usually, after the customary exchanges of rival avian pleasantries have commenced, culminates in a full-blown riot in the treetops. After a melee of squawking, cawing, cackling, and the accompanying shower of leaves and old dead branches coming down for me to trip and fall over, they generally move on… across the street, where they start all over again!
Oh, and did I mention that by this time, the neighbor’s dog is in full chorus, barking and yapping up at them in a futile barrage, which reaches the ears of all the other mutts in the neighborhood, whom, obeying some ancient and ridiculous primal instinct, proceed to join the ‘Drive The Old Highwayman Bonkers’ movement with incessant howling and growling and “Arooo-roo-roo-ing” guaranteed to bring out homicidal tendencies in even the most stoic individual!
By this time, my ‘hard-of-hearing’ wife has pried my cocked and aimed .38 Special out of my hands and shut the window, and, after my customary 5 – 10 minute customary rant, I have either mumbled and grumbled my way back to my former state of REM-deprived semi-consciousness, or retired to the computer to sort through my email to see what the ‘dragnet’ (spam filter) has caught; usually in the line of genital-enhancement ads, which promise me the endowment normally reserved for large beasts of agricultural and dairy applications.
Oh… were we talking about what we do about getting ready for Xmas? Hmmm…
I use that time to catch up on my sleep!
(I’m just pulling your leg, Jan… it’s really much worse!)
Ho-ho-ho!
Have a good holiday, you and yours, hear?
By: The Highwayman on December 19, 2007
at 5:10 pm
Highwayman, LOL!!!
You sure have a busy time annihilating the neighbours’ pets and the wild birds in preparation for Christmas! Ho-Ho-Ho!
Of course, I suspect that beneath all this bah-humbug, you hang your stocking like the rest of us, eat your Christmas food and enjoy a tipple! I bet you even the feed the wild birds too!
By: Lady Luck on December 19, 2007
at 5:33 pm
First of all, did you take those pictures? Gorgeous.
Secondly, to get that Chrismas feeling, I bake. My favorite things are date bread and butterball cookies. The taste of them takes me back. Back where? Just back!
I’m in the endless process of renovating my condo, so I haven’t decorated much this year. I do have a cute little tree up, a creche out, and a pine scented candle to make up for the tree not having a smell, due in whole to it being a fake!
Oh, and I LOVE to give presents. That’s probably my most favorite thing about Christmas. I try to listen throughout the year and take notes so that my family and friends are surprised that I knew they wanted that!
By: Lou (Linda) on December 20, 2007
at 1:29 am
Roses are red, sky is blue, you’re a better writer than me for sure, lol
By: daily health on December 20, 2007
at 6:32 am
Lou,
The pine scented candle and the fake tree made me laugh out loud – but what a lovely idea – much greener!
And, giving presents is always nice – especially when you get just the right thing that you know someone will really appreciate.
We chose as a family (a few years ago now) to buy modestly at Christmas. We decided that a modest gift carefully chosen can be just as special as an extravagant gift – and it cut out all the January blues of paying the credit card bills off! Now, if we haven’t got the cash we don’t buy it! Everyone bought into the idea once it was suggested – I think Christmas can be a very burdonsome time for people finanicially – and it shouldn’t be. After all, that’s not what it’s meant to be about.
By: Lady Luck on December 20, 2007
at 8:47 am