A Most Unusual Christmas Season!

This has been a most unusual Christmas for me so far!  As I mentioned in my last post, I finished decorating before I cleaned house, and fortunately, mostly before I injured my foot on December 7.  Well, here is how my foot looked last night, 12 days later!  It has been constant severe pain, and I usually can handle pain well, but not this!

I wouldn't think of showing what it looked like on the 8th!  Everything you see was black and blue, plus swollen about twice its size!  My toes looked like they might rot off!   The podiatrist told me Dec.15 that I had to keep it elevated, or face surgery.   I told him that would not be possible until Saturday, the 18th, because of the party at my home on Friday.  The large hematoma just refuses to go down, even though I've been on the couch all of Sat. & Sun afternoons!  I guess I'll be there again tomorrow, and I still have not bought a single Christmas present!  It's too late to do the Internet shopping!  (A friend and I are in a race to self-destruct!  I'm winning!)

Several friends wanted to cancel the party, but I said No Way!  They were bringing all the food anyway, and they also did all the dishes before they left.  There were 19 here, not the 24 I expected.  Traffic tie-ups and other plans kept some away, chemo kept another away; we missed them, but had a barrel of fun anyway!  I should haven taken pictures of the food they brought!  Again, a real oddity for my house, only one person brought sweets, and that was candy; there was not a cookie, cake, or pie, can you believe?  I was shocked; of course, we didn't need sweets after all the other things, but if I had not made a batch of peanut butter balls, fudge, and divinity, we would not have had enough to go around!  I still don't believe it from that bunch, and neither did they!  I just always tell them, "We'll eat what you bring!", and apparently no one knew what anyone else was bringing.  Still, it was wonderful, and no one went hungry!  Somehow, they all managed to take home a can full of either candy or TV Trash.  As usual, I read the Christmas story from the second Chapter of Luke and gave a little "sermonette", and we each recalled a favorite Christmas memory; it was a fun evening!  I have never known of another high school class like ours; I think we all love each other more after 54 years than we did when we were in school!  We truly are family!  We always have a good time when we are together, whether we are at a Christmas party, a class reunion, or  even a funeral visitation!

Here's just a few more Christmas pictures from around the house.

I made this back in the 60's when I also made Christmas stockings for the boys.

"Christmas Chickadees" hangs in the den, and is my favorite Christmas  quilt;  I made it in 2004.  You probably remember it from APQ.  I hand quilted it with metalic thread.  The berries are little round glass beads.

"Flying Home for Christmas" was new in 2009, and hangs in the sunroom.

Remember back in January when Ann (A Good Yarn) and I were going to make at least one Christmas thingy a month?  Well, here's my January thingy!  That's the last Christmas thing I finished in 2010!  Click twice to read the door hanger.

I do have another unfinished one on the coffee table in the den.  The fabrics are the same as the "Christmas Chickadees", but I never finished the quilting before I closed the machine down for Christmas!  Maybe in January I'll finish it???  My sister cross stitched the little lid on the TV Trash jar; hope you can read it.  It says "Tis the Season to be Snacking".

This little tree is in the den.  I have to tell you that both quilts were store bought, but I love them.  Can you believe Santa hasn't left a thing in my Christmas stocking since my sister died?  I surely thought I'd been a good girl, but I guess I was wrong!

The big tree is in the sunroom; I love how the lights reflect in the windows.

I found these little cross stitch decorations among the things my sister had made, and they will become a permanent part of my Christmas displays.  There are about 25 of them; I'm so proud of them!





My family will be here Christmas Eve as always (except last year when the snow didn't allow them to get here!)  Other than that, I guess it will be pretty quiet around here.  I'm just really not up to another party, though we had another one planned, but I agreed to cancel because of my foot.  Also the church quilters' leader wanted to have that party at her house this year, which was good, and I still had to miss it because of this foot!  But it could be worse!  I could be in a big cast!  So I'll try not to complain!

At least I got to see and hear the Christmas program at church tonight; it was all great, but the music was superb!

Just one more thing I want to share.  I don't read as much as a lot of you do, but I would like to recommend a quick read that I've enjoyed this past week.  It is "A Stranger for Christmas", by Carol Lynn Pearson.  It has a surprise ending, and will surely make you think about how you raised your children.  I loved it!

Hope all your shopping is done, your gifts wrapped, and most of the cooking done, so you can enjoy this week and next week-end with family and friends. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU!

---"Love"