Christmas joy

Merry Christmas!  George celebrated the first white Christmas of his life today and as you can see he's enjoying it.  We've had a beautiful snow, although it kept us from traveling to visit family.  The second photo is the assortment of presents George's mom gave me for Christmas.  Some of you have heard the stories of her "interesting" gifts and the tradition continues.  A "purse", two appliqued handkerchiefs, a crocheted coaster and a nail brush.  At least it wasn't another girdle!  Wishing everyone a joyful holiday!

People we love

This is part of our extended family - my friend Elizabeth, her husband George, our Godson Larsen and his two sisters, Anne Christian and Nancy.  We dropped by this morning for a Christmas visit and they were nice enough to be my blog subjects for today.  We traditionally have dinner with them on Christmas and since we'll be doing something else this year, we'll miss being with them.

Morning wreath

This morning I saw the dawn light shining in my kitchen door and stepped outside to soak it in.  I liked the way it angled across and highlighted the wreath on the door.  One of these days soon I'm going to quit being so lazy and actually get out with my camera at daybreak.

Holiday kitties

Okay.....these may be the last photos of my cats this year, but at least this time they're in costume!  Hobbes loves (yes really) his jingle collar.  Suzy hates (but of course) her Rudolph ears.  Mojo ran from all the fun and hasn't been seen since (the smart cat).

Simplicity

With all the color and glitz of Christmas photos the past few days, I was drawn today to something simple, serene and minimalist.  This is a small stone I like.  I brought it home from our trip to Utah last spring, and given all the many gazillion rocks we saw on our trip, for some reason, I liked this little pebble.  It has a nice heft for its size, good texture and fits well in my hand.  I keep it on my vanity and it makes me feel serene.  Not sure why it has that impact on me.....I guess some things are hard to explain, and this is just one of them.  So even though this is a very simple image, it seems an apt antidote for overload of holiday stress.

Lights all aglow

Put my lens on manual focus and intentionally blurred these images to take these abstract photos of the Christmas lights around our house.

Dinner party

We had fun with some great friends tonight at a dinner party at our house.  Of course, the price they had to pay was being the subject of tonight's blog.  I guess you can tell how they felt about that......