Merry 3rd Day of Christmas.....

Can a blogger, who has been absent from their blog

for more than 4 months,

just jump back into blogging like they've never been away?

I sure hope so!

I've missed you all...

I've missed visiting and reading and commenting..

Well actually, I have visited some..but I've been silent.

Life has been rather over-whelming for the past several months...

but it's getting much better and there is news to share.

As of December 18th, I am totally retired

AND

on January 13th, David will retire also.

That will be his last Sunday...

he will preach and preside at our two regular liturgies in the morning that day at 8:30 and 11:00.

 At 4:00 there will be a special service with special music,

followed by a reception at one of the local downtown hotels.

We are excited by the prospect of retirement and entering into the next

phase of our lives but we are sad about leaving the congregation that we love dearly.

As I said, life has been rather overwhelming lately.

 We celebrated Christmas Day at home in a quiet way.... after the 7 church services(between Sunday and Tuesday), and as it usually happens, were too tired to even have our special Christmas dinner

until yesterday. Today, we are rested and re-energized and ready to go forth toward 2013.

I wanted to share a bit our home with you today before I get on to other projects.

Two new Santas were added to my collection this year and you can see them on the mantel pictured above.  The Santa with the marionette is a Lori Mitchell Santa and goes very well with the Mrs. Claus I've had for a few years. The Bigsby Santa on the far left holding a tree and a wreath is a one-of-a-kind creation by my friend Elizabeth of Creative Breathing. I've written about Elizabeth many times and have been lucky enough to acquire some of her marvelous pieces. This one is a treasure and he has so much personality.

I decided to put out all of my Santas and Snowmen this year because I will be downsizing my collections after the New Year before packing things away. When I placed them all in our built-in bookcases in the family room, they looked cluttered with the many colors of the books already in place.

Cookbooks, crafting and decorating books, novels...just too much color.

The snowmen and Santas were lost in the riot of colors.

Then I remembered something I had seen...on a blog? in a magazine?

I don't remember where but I decided to turn all of the books around so the eye would only see the white pages of the books...

Big difference don't you think?

The figures were more easily seen...

There are more pictures but Blogger is not letting me upload much today. Probably the shock of me writing again! I will stop here and hope that you will consider stopping in from time to time. I will be visiting and more importantly, commenting again.

I hope you are all spending some time with your loved ones...

joyce
xoxo