TIS THE SEASON

Christmas is now here and it’s amazing how it arrived so quickly!  Of course when one is away from home for half of the year, the holidays do sneak up on you without much time to prepare.  Christmas is quiet for us this year.  Our family gets together every other year at Christmas time and unfortunately for us, this is not our year!  Our children and grandchildren are spending their Christmas with their other grandparents.  I suppose it is only fair that we share them!

Actually our holiday has been fine!  We drove to our daughters’s home in Charlotte a couple of weeks ago and was able to spend time with Emily and her family.  Since that time we have decorated the house to the hilt and bought lots of gifts for each other to put under the tree.  Some of the gifts were nice and some were silly!  We just wanted to make sure that we would have some fun on Christmas morning, and we did!

We have enjoyed the beauty of the season and have savored the peacefulness.  We went out to dinner on Christmas Eve and had a Jammie day on Christmas Day.  We spoke to our whole family and shared our “Merry Christmas “ wishes.

Now that Christmas is over, it’s time to reflect on the past year and make plans for the new one.  Yes, travel is on our agenda again along with new garden projects, dollhouse refurbishing, playing mahjong and warming up our golf clubs.  More about all of that in upcoming posts.

For now, I’m going to close out this year with photos of our holiday decor and of our eight beautiful grandchildren.  On to the New Year!

On December first, Santa came by our house via firetruck to wish us a Merry Christmas!

Here’s our outdoor decor by day……

And by night!  We did a blue and white theme this year.

Our entry and sitting room continues with the blue and white theme along with lots of deer decor.  The deer seem peaceful to me.

I’ve scattered around lots of mini trees.  I love our vintage nativity set! I picked it up in an antique shop years and years ago.

More blue and white, mini trees, greens and deer are scattered about.

Our main tree - one of four -is in our great room.

The Carolina Room - our indoor/outdoor room that leads to the patio.

Flowers, greenery and dried orange slices.

I set up a mini Christmas village.

Nutcrackers and Santa’s adorn the staircase leading to Marks upstairs den. We also have “mini” pretend pastries and candy under cover in the kitchen - just for fun!

Years and years ago Mark bought this big nativity set and finally got it out this year.  He set it up in his den.

And finally - the best photos of all! OUR LOVES - all eight of them on Christmas morning!