Merry Christmas! I hope everyone enjoys a beautiful day today with friends and family!
~ Cindy
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Hello!
It’s hard to believe it’s already December 23rd! How did you spend your weekend? Shopping, wrapping, baking, traveling, visiting, decorating, celebrating……???
It was a whirlwind weekend here. To start it off we had a Christmas party with friends, “old” friends from our years in Monterey, CA. We were just newlyweds then, and these are the wonderful neighbors that lived just down the street. Amazingly we all live close by after all these years, now on the East Coast. It was our turn to host the party this year. We enjoyed Randy’s champagne punch (he even forgot to add the frozen lemonade but no one noticed!), Patti’s beef tips and Rhonda’s Bruschetta. I made my favorite Hot Artichoke Dip which I just can’t resist…if you want an appetizer that will have everyone coming back for more, just contact me for the recipe! The kids made super-cute reindeer brownies, complete with a sour cherry nose. The younger crowd played “Pass the Parcel”, attempted to play “Freeze Dance”, shared their Pokemon cards, and exchanged gifts. We enjoyed the food and drink, reminisced, shared stories about Life and exchanged gifts as well.
Now I realize I may have never ever shared a photo of myself before anywhere on this website…so here’s a rare one! Here’s a party picture for you, my faithful and few blog readers. 🙂 The face behind sweet bead studio is right there in the middle.
In other other holiday happenings, we visited the National Christmas Tree last night in Washington, DC. This is a tradition that is very important to my husband, and we go no matter how cold it is! We bring our thermos of hot chocolate along and brave the weather. We were super lucky last night. It was not only somewhat warm, it started raining once we were in the car heading home! It was a beautiful sight to see the big, bright tree flanked by the Washington Monument on one side and the White House on the other. This year my youngest was so excited to see the many trains that wind around the base of the tree…my 7 year old counted 10 train sets chugging along.
And last but not least, we ended the weekend with yet another family tradition: making sugar cookies! I remember when my Grandmother would come over at Christmas bearing tins of chocolate chip and sugar cookies (do you remember those great tins, they promised something wonderfully home baked inside!). I pulled out my special rolling pin that my Grandmother gave me around the holidays when I was in college. Three sets of helping hands sure make for a challenging evening of cut-out cookie baking, but it was worth it. And we only burned one batch.
I hope you are all enjoying many happy family traditions, and maybe even creating new ones as well.
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Just one week to go until Christmas? How can that be? I’m sure you all agree that time has been flying by way too fast. With the kids home this week, it has been a little more difficult to cram in all of the last minute details this final week. I’ll admit I’m still working on my Christmas cards….so if you have not received one yet, you know why!
One of our highlights of the season is a trip to visit Santa. We’ve made this trip every year since becoming parents 7 years ago. We were accompanied again this year by my brother, his wife and their toddler son. There were really no tears this year (probably a first!), and we all came home with great pictures. Here is what my Kindergartner asked for this year: beads and craft supplies! Aaaahhhh…a little boy after my own heart. Would you believe I almost left the mall without my dear pictures? I had left them earlier at the See’s counter (another annual tradition, this one from our days in Monterey)…luckily my husband noticed the envelope was missing right as we were leaving an hour later!
Thanks to those of you who voted in the Guess the Skittles game from the other day….are you ready for the grand total??? There were (now quite a few are missing, he he) 2,481 in the jar! And would you believe my Dad guessed 2,500??? You were close….much closer than my husband’s guess of 10,000….well, he did retract that quickly and dropped the number dramatically when I looked shocked.
I know this is a jewelry-design blog and you must be wondering, where’s the latest?? Jewelry has been on the back burner these days with all of the season’s festivities unfortunately. I hope to swing in to gear in the New Year. Here are a few close-up shots of a couple necklaces I did manage to create recently.
Good luck to all in this final exciting week leading up to Christmas. May you squeeze in all that you had hoped to do, still stop to enjoy a cup of egg nog latte, and most importantly – find many moments of joy this season!
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