Our house is a flurry of activity. We have had our Christmas tree up for a couple of weeks, but it is these final days where we hunker down and get serious about wrapping. The stage is set: The tree remains lit all day and Christmas movies and music play non-stop in the background. Items we've been collecting over the last few weeks are retrieved from the attic and under beds and wherever else we felt we could safely stash them away from friends and family. Last minute deliveries have been coming in too. So just when it seems we must certainly be finished, a new item arrives that must be attended to and shipping foam and boxes are strewn about once again.
Our gift wrapping table is overflowing with odds and ends of paper, ribbons and creative gift toppers in various stages of development. My daughter, Alex, among everything else, is working on a photo project she's gifting friends in Italy –(where she'll be celebrating a second Christmas and ringing in the New Year —Lucky girl!)
In between wrapping gifts, I'm also baking them –making cookies (3 kinds) and coconut-covered "snowball cakes." (The latter are something new I suddenly had the urge to attempt — I'll let you know how it goes.) The house smells of oranges (our main sustenance this day) and rosemary, vanilla and cinnamon.
We've been home all day and the California weather is doing its best to convince us of the season — "It's a blustery day, Pooh!" Alex proclaimed as she dashed just now from the house to the studio where I'm taking a quick break to write this.
Though several rooms in the house have been turned upside-down in this creative whirlwind of ours, a happy energy is pervasive and there seems a magical glow to every package and every ornament. We're blissfully enveloped in the warm spirit of this special time together...Love (really is) all around us.
~Wishing the same to you and yours!
