Christmas Eve Hullaballoo

Well it's here. Christmas Eve. I hope yours is going wonderful and lovely. Mine is, um, a bit frantic, hurried and out of sorts. My husband's mom is in the hospital again. She has a chronic intestinal problem and it picked today to kick up for her.

As I write this, it's looking like she has to have surgery and my husband is on his way up there now. :( Between that, trying to get insurance issues resolved, and some family estrangement, it is not a an overly happy holiday. I'm usually a "glass half full" kind of girl, but there are some issues that are preventing even me from seeing the bright side at this time. I SO DO NOT want to be a downer.

It's also very hard having Christmas without my step-dad around. Seeing how hard it's been on my mom being alone while dealing with some pretty awful family issues is just emotionally taxing on us all. You just want to make it better for everyone, but you can only do so much.

OK, let me try and turn this around.

I have started collecting some different type Christmas/Winter decorations and have really found some cute things the past couple seasons. I'm trying to concentrate on things I can leave out all winter. I got the tin houses at Marshall's and HomeGoods. One is very large and the other is a bit smaller. I adore them! I want to collect more of these type things.

I picked up two of these snowflake lanterns at JoAnn's last year. It's a matte pottery type thing that has been pierced. They are pretty large and look so beautiful with candles in them, or even without! 

These little ceramic tealight houses are from Homegoods. They are a matte style and I love the non-descript nature of them. Just kind of soothing to look at.

These pretty trees are from JoAnn's from last year. They are glittery/snowy, but not too overly Christmas-y. 

And just a little shot of our tree. We are so lucky to have so many presents. Not all of them are showing here. There have been many added since I took this! And of course, my sweet little Jenny in the background there. OK, starting to feel better now.

I'm thinking about goals for 2019.  That will take up the whole next week of my thoughts, I'm sure. Along with trying to help my husband's mom get back on her feet and healthy. We have been trying to get all of our parents to move to our neighborhood where we can all be there for eachother. Don't know if it will ever happen, but it would be nice.

I hope anyone coming across this blog will remember to pause to be thankful at the end of this year for what you have. I'm going to concentrate on that, along with my goals for next year. All in all, we are lucky and fortunate.  That is not lost on me just because of some current hurdles we are facing.

Enjoy your holidays and I hope you everyone gets lots of stitching time, reading time and time with who ever it is you call your family!  I plan to finish those dang witches and get a new project going by the 31st. Wish me luck, lol. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!