Tag: holiday

Welcome to the 2011 Holiday Blog Hop. We’re having some fun during this crazy holiday time talking music, movies, and more. Best of all, we’re giving away over $80.00 worth of prizes!

Two days. Tuesday December 13 and Wednesday December 14, 2011. Four blogs each day. All you have to do is show up and comment on each blog to be entered for the grand prize drawing of eight e-books and a $40 Amazon Gift Card! Just in time for the holiday season!

Day One December 13th:

Lynn Rush: http://lynnrush.com/
Kendall Grey: http://www.kendallgrey.com/
Caridad Piñeiro: https://www.caridad.com/blog/
Rebecca Zanetti: http://rebeccazanetti.com/blog-2/

Day Two December 14th:

Rachel Firasek: http://www.rachelfirasek.com/
Ciara Knight: http://www.ciaraknight.com/
Lisa Kessler: http://lisakessler.wordpress.com/
Jean Murray: http://wickedromance.wordpress.com/

Guidelines for the Blog Hop!

Open internationally

Contest runs from 2am (Eastern Standard Time) Tuesday December 13th, 2011 to Midnight (Eastern Standard Time) Wednesday December 14th, 2011. Winner announced Monday December 19th, 2011 on all of the blogs in the hop.

Winner: You will have ten days (10) to contact us to claim your prize: (lynnrush at cox dot net) Failure to contact us within allotted time will forfeit your prize. We can then choose either to re-award the prize to another entrant or not.

To earn the twenty-five (25) entries toward the grand prize you must comment on each of the eight blogs participating in the Holiday Blog Hop.

Please remember it is illegal to sell, forward, give away or copy electronic books in anyway. Doing so violates copyright.

If you are unable to leave comments on the blogs due to lack of internet connectivity/availability, you may enter via email to LynnRush at cox dot net.

And now for my holiday traditions!

I love the holiday season! Starting with Thanksgiving and going all the way to Christmas, the holiday season for me is filled with family, friends and remembering something very important: How blessed I am in life.

So, first it’s a wonderful time with family at Thanksgiving and this year we headed out a little early to get our Christmas tree. Every year we head to the Anne Ellen Tree Farm. It’s a lovely and peaceful time, traipsing through the fields to find the perfect tree to take home. After we find it and chop it down, we buy a couple of ornaments to commemorate that year’s visit.

Then we head home and as time allows, trim the tree and also set up a Christmas village. Both are so much fun.

For the tree, we sift through the ornaments, recalling the Christmases of the past. It’s fun to see what we thought was important that year as we always try to get ornaments that reflect what was going on in our lives that year. So there are ornaments about graduations or getting licenses. Others we bought on vacations and with the flavor of where we’ve been to remind us of those good times and wonderful places. You’ll see one of our favorites (the naked butt Christmas family) in the slide show below (or you can check out the album by clicking here!).

This is the ornament we call the naked butt Christmas family. I bought the ornament when I was able to visit Peru many years ago and we love its simplicity and humor!

But the tree isn’t the only thing we do to prep for Christmas! We also put up a village. The pieces in the village have been collected from various places and stores. We pick the pieces when they appeal to us, so it’s a mix of all different kinds of buildings, people and other assorted objects. We try to add a little something every year and it’s always fun to try a new look and layout for the village.

Created with flickr slideshow.

After the tree and village are up, we decorate the outside of the house and the other rooms to get ready for Christmas Eve. Since hubby is Italian and I’m Cuban, Christmas Eve is a mix of the Italian Seven Fishes and a traditional Cuban meal. As you can imagine, tons of food, but the best part is having lots of family and friends around the table to share in the celebration. Here’s a photo of what the tables look like on Christmas Eve.

I won’t even tell you how long it takes to cook all the food and do all the clean-up, but no matter what, it’s worth it to be able to share the love of family and friends on such a special night. To me, that love is the true spirit of Christmas!

Thank you for visiting. Please visit my other friends and fellow authors on the blog hop and leave comments in order to earn points toward the giveaway!