Christmas Dates

At last at last! It's Christmastime! I spent most of November doing what I always do - secretly pre-celebrating Christmas. I start the music when no one else is listening (except Troy), I hang a cute little Santa from my rearview mirror, I wave hello to all the decorations and lights in the stores. I try to keep it in check. But once the Thanksgiving dishes are done, all bets are off. Bring on all the music, bring on all the decorations, bring on all the movies.

And right off the bat I had a couple of delightful Christmas dates.

For starters I signed up for a felted ornament-making class and my friends Heather and Lynnette signed up with me. We had such a pleasant evening together working on our ornaments.

This cute Santa face was not made by us, but seeing it as the advertisement for the class was the reason I signed up. I have hopes of making one just as cute someday.

My friend Becca and I continued our tradition of making time for a Christmas Date together. It seems to happen each year the first weekend after Thanksgiving. We have our system pretty down pat. We like to do a some shopping, get dinner, definitely get a hot cocoa from Hatch Family Chocolates, and then watch a Christmas movie (it's ALWAYS The Holiday, we decided) while we work on something crafty. 

We did make one big change - years ago when we began this, we'd always make sure to go to Modern Display in downtown SLC. Sadly that store moved to Midvale or something and just isn't as fun as it used to be. For a few years we went to the Christkindl Mart at This is the Place Heritage Park, but found it to be so crowded that it kind of wasn't fun. We came up with something new. I heard about a shop in Midway called "Kringles." It's an all-Christmas all-year shop and I suggested to Becca that we start the afternoon by me picking her up from her office downtown, getting some drinks, and driving to Midway to check out the shops there. It turned out to be such a great idea - there are several boutiques and a bookstore all clustered together with plenty of parking everywhere and no crowds to fight through. Kringle's was darling and I loved going to Folklore, a bookshop owned by one of my mom's former students at West High School. There were even a couple of shops who always have a booth at the Christkindl Mart so we felt like we weren't missing out on anything at all!

We picked up a few treasures but mostly just enjoyed the sights and the quaint feel of Midway. There was even a creche display happening in the town hall - probably 150 creches from all over the world were set up and we had fun wandering among the tables. Some of the collections were beautiful, made of olive wood from Israel or carved from stone. Some were oddly comical - I confess I'll probably never own a nativity set where each character is a barnyard animal, a teddy bear, or a moose. Yeah, having a moose baby Jesus is a little weird. But hey, to each their own. 

 

After Midway, we made our way back to the valley, got our hot cocoa, picked up food from Spitz, and went to my house to sit by the fire, of course watch The Holiday, and work on Christmas crafts. Before we started the movie, however, Becca made me open my gift. She, for the record, is absolutely the best gift-giver on the planet. This year was no exception. Just look at these gorgeous hand-embroidered ornaments she made. I absolutely love them. They are just our style - Troy loves them as much as I do. My house has so many things in it that Becca has made. She's such a great friend.

 

One last evening I'll include from this first week of December was our first church youth activity. We decided to make goody bags for missionaries on temple square. We got some cute paper bags and filled them with oranges, candy, and thank you notes that the kids wrote. We hopped in our cars and went downtown. It was so cold that night so we shivered as we walked around temple square hunting for missionaries. They were actually a little hard to find at first (it turns out that most of them were inside the conference center, taking part in a singing performance) but we managed to find a few and hand them goody bags. It was actually so delightful - the missionaries were all just tickled, and so smiley and grateful. Doing nice things for other people is the happiest thing. We had so much fun, even though we were so cold.