Wrapping time

 It's that time of the year again. Here I am wrapping the presents. I do like it.

I leave you here with some papers and presents.

More to come.

Advent

Preparing ourselves for Christmas, which means the birthday of Our Lord

Advent has began yesterday, this year it began in November and we are now in the Liturgical Year A which will end in the the 2 of December, 2023.

On the First of December we will put our Christmas Tree up and make the Nativity, we always do it on the first day of the month.

It's always a great fun in every step of it. First we must go to the garage and bring it together with all the Christmas boxes containning the decorations: ribbons, garlands, everything to put on the tree and the Crib and to deck the walls.

First we put the tree up and also the Nativity. Then we put some of the decorations on it, and we carry on doing it on the following days. During those few days I must say the room is filled with the boxes but we don't mind because it just two days or so, usually. Then we take them to the garage again.

This Saturday and Sunday I was planning on doing some more wrapping but I couldn't. Oh well, never  mind, I will do some, maybe, on the first of December in the evening or maybe some on the 30 of November. I will see how it goes.

We aldready bought a lot of wrapping paper, we began in October !!! It's always such joy when we see the first wrapping papers on sale each Autumn. And we always bring the leftovers of last Christmas from the garage, together with numerous oh, ah, because we like to remember the ones we used and the happiness it brought to us when we were using it to wrapp the presents in the previous year.

Truly Christmas time is a wonderful time of the year.

I leave you now with some pictures of some Christmas past.

See you tomorrow.

PS: These pictures are from years past.

These blessed days before Christmas

It has been raining and raining. Not that I mind or complain, after the draught this rain is a blessing, it's just that a homemaker really needs some days of sun, or at least, that it doesn't rain so she may dry some clothes in the wind.

I do like the nice smell of dried clothes, if they are mine they smell like lavendar, the others have other nice smells. My children relate lavender with all things mine and they like to have their own scents. And I must say I don't like lavender scent on the kitchen laundry, I prefer to have it on my own things or the bathroom laundry.

Anyway, it has been quite a real Autumn with all this rain, wind, fog and it has been rather cold, at least as cold as it can be in this corner of Europe.

The days go by and I give thanks to Our Lord every day for all those blessings He gives to us. Even in the more difficult days we feel, so clearly, His Hand on us, guiding us, protecting us and helping us in each step of the way. Thanks be to God in His Saints and in His Angels and, above all, in His Holy Mother.

The First Thankgiving - September 8, 1565 - https://myfloridahistory.org/frontiers/article/140 

I'm not American but I do like Thanksgiving, even if we don't celebrate it, but I like it because one upon a time my husband, still not even my fiancé, organized a lunch with several people just to invite me. Well, one year later we were already married and I don't regret it at all.

After Thanksgiving it comes black friday which, even if I don't like the name of it, I like the reduced things we can find on that day.

And about Christmas, I must say that I'm singing Rudolph since October so I am in Christmas mood for a long time.

 

I've been buying and wrapping presents for a whole month now.

One of this days I will post about it as I like to do it every year.

From last year

Bye for now, see you tomorrow, maybe.

Presents

Christmas Day came and go. No that Christmas is past yet as it goes to the Epiphany, but the Day itself, I mean.

I spent the days before preparing for the big day shopping for the last presents, for the last ingredients and finishing wrapping the presents. I had not a spare moment to come here and say something.

Now all is calm and rest and here I am.

I will leave you with the animation of  the wrapping season, the happiness.

So it went from this

to this 

and this

then to this

and at last to this !! 😄

So many hours of wrapping and all the presents are out and the pretty papers done in rubble with the bows apart. It was all worthwhile. The happiness in those faces for each opened present !

Thanks be to God !

Shopping and wrapping

Since October I have been Christmas shopping and a lot of shopping I did !

As I work full time, I have mostly Saturdays and Sundays for doing it so yesterday, after Mass, I head for the mall and stay there for a couple hours or more and I have lunch, or a kind of it, on the way, between shops, because I had no time to lose.

I'm quite pleased as I managed to buy things for all even if I intend to go back to buy some more. A lot  of money was spent but I did it wisely and I am very happy with myself. I don't buy on expensive shops and I always can find nice things for a good money.

I was so lucky that I managed to buy already most things.

We are a big family for European standards. Add to my children my parents, sisters and brothers, real and in law, and nephew and you'll have a lot of people to buy presents for and around the table on the days of Christmas.

So I have been wrapping ! I'm saying this all victorious because I'm doing a good job: instead of postponing day after day on wrapping I have began already and very well I am in that.

Even if I intend to buy more, I must say that I bought already quite a lot of presents. I will not leave them to last hour marathons, I began already and a lot of them are wrapped.

Oh, happiness.

I intend to keep posting about the antics of Christmas time being it shopping, wrapping, planning and cooking.

Isn't this a wonderful time of the year ?! I give thanks.

Past Christmases

So here we go, in the middle of December, with the house decorated for Christmas, lists done and being checked, plans made and shopping done and being done.

Presents not all wrapped but being done.
That's a nice time of the  year.

I look back in time and see how Christmas is always a blessed time and how it's such fun to get things ready for the big day.

All pictures in this post are from Christmases past and I hope that soon I will post some of the preparations of this one.

This picture above is from a year when all the girls were younger and we even had a baby (who now is a teen), that's why we have this amount of presents - and not all of them were in this picture !

The food work is always an important part but, of course, it is in every home and also are the tables.

We can never forget the Christmas Pudding, a MUST in my home.

Just in case some of you don't know it and are wondering why it is in flames, I must tell you that you pour some brandy and light a match on it. It's always a big moment and we hope that it produce some nice and big flames. In this picture my husband very proud of the accomplishment.

As for today I leave you with the Nativity - which this year is already set, as always since the First of December - but this years pictures deserve another post.

Bye for now.

It's wrapping time

Talking about Christmas ! Yey !! I'm organising my wrapping supplies.

I know I have a lot of wrapping paper from last year because I like it so much I always buy more than I need but I know that as soon shops here begin selling it, I'm going running buying for more as if I had any or as if there was the danger of the shops be running out of paper.

It's that time of the year again and, you may think I'm crazy, but I like it. I do like wrap presents, choosing the paper, the bow, the tag, all that make me happy. Just one problem. I wonder why in spite of the several sessions I always end up having to do last wrapping on Christmas Eve. 

I'm so decided: this year I will have all my wrapping work done before that. 

After Christmas I will come here with an open heart and confess myself. If I failed I will tell you the truth.

Maybe I can wrap just one...or three...but not more than that !

On Christmas Eve I like to only concentrate on kitchen work: no cleaning, only the dailies, no wrapping, no worries of any kind, only cooking and baking for Christmas Eve Dinner and Christmas Lunch.

It's nice to freely think about Christmas when, to say the truth, December didn't arrive yet. But why not ? Why must we be allowed to only think and talk about it in some given date ?

Let's be free and talk away about Christmas. I like it and I will do it all the time till it arrives !

The then little girls always liked so much the Disney papers. As I still have one young girl I will try to find some to wrap her presents this year too.

But what is funny is that last Christmas the big ones said they like child papers too for their presents.

Ok, I will do that for them also.

Oh, I can't wait to begin wrapping.