these are a few of my favorite Christmas things...

Day 1 of 3 off and what did I accomplish?

1 doctor appointment down, 2 more to go.

cleaned the kitchen

cleaned the dining room

cleaned the family room (and decorated it for Christmas)

saw Love and Other Drugs

went to Old Navy to get a couple of sweaters (buy one, get one free) and some long sleeve t-shirts

cleaned the guest bathroom

cleaned my bedroom

Not too shabby, I think considering this girl is a major procrastinator!

Curious to see what I can get done tomorrow!!!

Here are a few of my favorite Christmas things...

My Great Grandmother made Christmas stockings for all her great grandchildren.  When we were younger, "Santa" made sure they were filled to the gills - which made the fact that our stockings were HUGE extra specially awesome!  My mom made it clear a few years back that "Santa" was no longer interested in filling our stockings.  Boo on that!

My Grandma buys all her grandchildren the Swarvoski crystal snowflake ornament of the year.  So far, I have 11 of these beauties.  2010 will make snowflake #12.  I always strategically place each snowflake on my tree so that the lights hit them just right!  Here is the ornament from 2001!

Many moons ago before I was old enough to gamble, younger sister Linda, my brother Eddie, and I would use up my parent's generous cash donation in Vegas to play the Midway games over our Thanksgiving vacation.  On our first day there, we saw "the Christmas rats" (or so we called them) and knew we had to have them.  They were "expensive" in the way that midway games often are - in other words, they cost a lot of tickets, so we knew we had to work hard to get them.  We did just that and on our last day, we accumulated all our tickets and had enough to buy each of us our Christmas rats.  Linda and I got the girl one and Eddie bought the boy one.  Technically, we had enough tickets to buy older sister Cathy (she was of gambling age) a Christmas rat, too, BUT we got greedy and started getting all kinds of junk.  My college peeps will remember "Club Kim" which came from this greed!  ha!  In the end, we bought Cathy a lopsided ugly little dog.  She said, "oh thanks, it's so cute" and then threw it away before we left for the airport.  I still have my Christmas rat and love it (probably more for the story than the rat itself).

Last, but not least, I bought this snowman family from Sam's Club several years back.  I love snowmen and I just think this little family is so cute!  I always change where I display it - this year, it's on the dining room table!

What are some of your favorite Christmas decorations?