Tag Archives: december

25 Days of Christmas: Days 22-25

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This is the last installation of my 25 Days of Christmas challenge!  The last four topics are cookies, sparkle, Christmas eve, and unwrapped:

Day 22 – Cookies – Matt’s mom bakes a huge assortment of sugar and gingerbread cookies and his family gathers before Christmas to frost and decorate them.  Matt frosted this ornament cookie.

Day 23 – Sparkle – One of our sparkly snowflake ornaments.

Day 24 – Christmas Eve – We had our parents over for Christmas Eve dinner last night.  We made bruschetta and Giada’s Penne with Shrimp in Herbed Cream Sauce… yum!

Day 25 – Unwrapped – I’m cheating and using two photos for this final topic…  The top photo shows pile of unwrapped wrapping paper on Matt’s new step stool and the bottom photo shows Bailey with her freshly-unwrapped bone!

25 Day Photo Challenge

Would you like to see more 25 Days of Christmas fun?  Visti Pa-BLAM to see Pami’s days 22-25 post and visit Katie at Kitchen Notes and Other Sundries to see her challenge photos.

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25 Days of Christmas: Days 15-21

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This week’s 25 Days of Christmas topics are warmth, ornaments, wreath, giving, reindeer, memories, and bells:

Day 15 – Warmth – Our wonderful, warm, easy-to-use propane stove!

Day 16 – Ornaments – Our tree doesn’t have a specific theme, but I’ve noticed that we seem to gravitate towards animal ornaments and apparently we have a thing for squirrels! Next year we really need to get a black squirrel ornament.

Day 17 – Wreath – We have a double front door which means that we need these double wreathes!

Day 18 – Giving – These chocolate-dipped coconut stick cookies are all packed up and ready to give to friends and family. I’ll post the recipe soon!

Day 19 – Reindeer – This reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh was always one of my favorite Christmas decorations growing up.

Day 20 – Memories – My dad passed away in 2005 but I fondly remember him always sitting in this chair on Christmas morning while we opened presents. We’d have to wait for what seemed like hours until we were allowed to come downstairs and see what Santa had brought for us!

Day 21 – Bells – This ornate bell is part of an indoor display at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. Longwood is a great place to visit at Christmas time!

25 Day Photo Challenge

Would you like to see more 25 Days of Christmas fun? Visit Pami at Pa-BLAM and Katie at Kitchen Notes and Other Sundries to see their photos!

Related Posts:

25 Days of Christmas: Days 8-14

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It’s time for another installation of my 25 Days of Christmas challenge!

Day 8 – Tree – This was an easy one because I love our tree this year! As usual, we picked it out at Linvilla Orchards the Sunday after Thanksgiving. You’ll get to see some of the ornaments on Day 16…

Day 9 – Treats – OK, not a Christmas photo per se, but to me this photo screams “treat.” We taught Bailey this trick a few years ago but juding by the look on her face I don’t think that she likes it very much!

Day 10 – Joy – This photo is from Christmas morning last year. It was our first Christmas in our new house and Bailey was having fun trying to lick our faces mid-photo.

Day 11 – Carols – This is my mom’s piano with “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” ready to be played by someone (not me!). I spent countless hours of my childhood sitting in front of this piano. Now I’m glad just to photograph it and move on!

Day 12 – Vintage – I don’t know what year this Santa is from, but he’s been around since as long as I can remember so that makes him vintage as far as I’m concerned!

Day 13 – Festive – A nice holiday beverage with an orange peel “twist.” We made these last year for New Year’s Eve.

Day 14 – Glitter – These glittery candles belonged to my wonderful grandma, “Mimi Betty.” Mimi passed away a few years ago but my mom and I each have several of her Christmas decorations and I often think about her at this time of year. Mimi was fond of – no, obsessed with! – the color gold and had dozens of glittery ornaments and candles including these lovely Christmas trees.

25 Day Photo Challenge

Would you like to see more 25 Days of Christmas fun? Visit Pami at Pa-BLAM and Katie at Kitchen Notes and Other Sundries to see their photos!

Streaking, Reflections, and Other December Challenges

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I don’t usually take part in online challenges but I am making several exceptions this month!  Here’s a quick run down of the fun challenges that I will be participating in for December:

1.  I’m Going Streaking!!

As a part of the Runner’s World “Streak,”  I have committed to run, walk, or elliptical at least 1 mile every day between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.  I completed my mile for day 12 of the streak this morning and I feel great!

“Streaking” is a big deal for me because, although I was a runner in college, I’ve really done very, very little running since graduating in 2007.  I am usually quite content to come home from work and make dinner/watch TV/blog/do anything besides exercise.  But all of that has changed since I started my streak on Thanksgiving.  Now I actually wake up BEFORE work (something I never would have believed that I’d ever do!) and I elliptical my mile while groggily watching the morning traffic and news.  It’s an awesome feeling to come home from work and know that I have already finished my exercising for the day.  🙂

I have to give a quick shout out to Jocelyn from Running Noodle because without Jocelyn I never would have known that the Streak challenge existed.  I read Jocelyn’s “Streaking” Post last winter and decided then and there that I would try streaking myself this year.  I learned this weekend that streaking is actually a whole blog/twitter/social media “thing” with it’s own hashtag (#RWStreak) so I guess I’ll start tagging my streaking posts from now on!

weekly photo contest - "reflection"

2.  Weekly Photo Challenge: REFLECTION

I kept seeing posts with beautiful “reflection” photos featured in my WordPress reader so I did some investigating and learned that WordPress sponsors a Weekly Photo Challenge.  It’s easy to participate so I thought this would be a fun way to add to my December challenges.  I think to actually join the challenge properly I need to create a brand new post titled “Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflection” but this post will have to suffice for week 1.

I have two photos featuring reflections for this week.  The first (above) is a rare self-portrait of me taking a photo of Bailey via the car’s rear view mirror.  She loves car rides!  (Ignore my wrinkly forehead… I was thinking hard!)  The second (below) is a photo of a Delmarva DockDog named Sam.  I love how Sam and his toy are converging with their reflections!

weekly photo contest - "reflection"

3.  25 Days of Christmas Photo Challenge

Yes, another photo challenge.  (When I decide to do something I go all out!)  I learned about this photo challenge from Pami at Pa-BLAM.  There’s a nice holiday-themed topic for each day and, like Pami, I will probably do a post every 7 days or so with the photos from the previous week.  I’m going to have to rely on some holiday photo archives for a few of these though… I mean, I HOPE that I see snow on December 7th but at this point that’s not looking too likely!

25 Day Photo Challenge

OK, well that just about sums up my December challenges.  I think that #3 is going to be really fun but overall I am most excited about Streaking.  Wish me luck!   🙂