Christmas Will Soon Be Here

On Friday evening we decided to go Christmas shopping. Our first stop was to JC Penney armed with a $10 off $25 coupon. My Mom wanted a new blanket for Christmas, so that was on my list. I found one she wanted, which was originally $52, but was listed as 50% off that day, so after my coupon I paid $16 plus tax. This was similar in price to one I looked at in Walmart, but much better in quality. 

Our second stop was to Bath & Body Works where they had their tubes of lotion on sale for $4 each. My daughter bought the Twisted Peppermint last year, and I fell in love with it, so I bought three tubes for Christmas. One for Mom, one for my daughter, and one for me. These are regularly $13, so $4 is a really good price for these. And the scent is so good it reminds me of Christmas. 

One of my favorite things about Christmas, as an adult, is unwrapping the ornaments each year. Some of them hold such sentiment that it's like opening a treasure trove into the past. They are stored in a popcorn tin from 1990 that I won as a door prize at work that year. Each ornament is lovingly wrapped in tissue paper, which I remove and press by hand and place back into the tin until it's time to wrap them up again. 

Some of my favorites are the Baby's First Christmas from 1997 that I received as a baby shower gift in 1997 from the X-Ray department at the hospital where I worked that year when I was pregnant with my daughter. 

This is a mailbox made by my daughter's grandmother. I rescued it years ago and I am confident that if I hadn't it would be gone or ruined by now. My daughter and I never met her as she passed away from cancer in 1987. Every year when we open the ornaments I tell my daughter the story of her and she will have this to remember the grandmother she never got to know. 

Some ornaments make me sad like this one. My niece gave me the one on the left, which includes my exdh, the year our daughter was born. The one on the right was a gift from my sister in 2006 and includes just the two of us. 

This one is from my own childhood. A craft kit we made back in the 1970s and made into a shoe with my name on the bottom in my Mother's own handwriting. A keepsake for sure. 
I could go on about some more ornaments, but I won't. My daughter decorated the clocks to look like reindeer. 

And here is one of our trees, we put up two because the first one's lights would not come on, so we decided to leave it up as well as the bigger one. My picture of it turned out blurry, but I will include it in a future post. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! 

Belinda ~ Merry Christmas ~