Favourite Things Christmas Swap & Festive Weekend Recap

Finally.

I’m FINALLY getting around to posting about what I received in the Favourite Things Canadian Christmas Swap!

A long time ago, fellow blogger (and great gal that I know IRL) Ashley at The Johnstons sent me an email to give me a heads-up that a few of the bloggers she follows were organizing a Christmas Swap for Canadians.  It’s one of the unfortunate things about being Canadian in the blog world…quite often we get left out of Swaps because of shipping costs. 

So Leigh at All You Need is Love and Lindsey at A Running Tale decided to remedy that by putting together a Canadians-ONLY Christmas Swap!  And you can BET I was in!

Late in November, I shipped off my parcel to Brittany at My. Daily. Randomness (you can see her post about the Swap here), and I was thrilled when, not long after, my package from Taren showed up at the post office.

I ripped into that box quickly!

And this is what I found…

What an awesome little bundle of Christmas loot!

Taren sent me a beautiful red Christmas ornament, an apple-cinnamon candle, a notebook and notecards monogrammed with a “J”, a beautiful shade of red nailpolish called “Madison Avenue”, a Debbie Macomber Christmas novel, and some Quality Street chocolates and Christmas Mini Eggs.

I loved every little bit of it!  The candle was burning in my kitchen all weekend while I did some Christmas baking, and I’ve already polished off those chocolates.  The Christmas ornament is hanging up, and I can’t wait to use my notebook and notecards.  I was thrilled with the red polish – I looooove nail polish! – and I painted my nails with it (topped with some China Glaze Platinum Pieces crackle) on Friday evening before heading out to our Christmas Potluck Book Club meeting.  The book, which I’ve started reading, made me giggle because I sent the EXACT SAME BOOK to my partner!!  Too funny!!

Thank you so much, Taren!  Wishing you a Merry Christmas & all the joy of the holiday season! :)

On to the rest of the weekend…and what a busy weekend it was!

As I mentioned, Friday evening was my Book Club’s Christmas Pot Luck meeting at Lindsay’s, where we had lots of yummy food and chatted about the book we had just read, Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner.  I think I can speak for all of the ladies when I say we had a great evening!

Saturday was a busy one.  I got up and headed straight to Shawville to finish up my Christmas shopping, and then rushed home to spend the afternoon doing some Christmas baking and preparing for my dad’s “birthday party”.  As usual, Dad insisted he didn’t want any kind of birthday celebration, so instead I invited my family over for homemade pizza, and my mom brought Dad’s cake…We partied in his honour anyways! 

Then my sister and brother-in-law hustled the kids off to get ready for the Parade of Lights, as they were on our church’s Sunday School float.

Great job, guys!!! :)

The parade was one of the best we’ve ever had, and we had lots of fun watching the floats pass by.  The only thing we were missing was a little snow.  Oh, and those mugs of hot chocolate and Bailey’s I had intended to provide!  (The one thing I forgot on my shopping list was the Bailey’s!)

Yzerman (aka “Wizerman”) waiting for the parade to start

Luke, Caleb & Allysha waiting for the parade to start

Here we go!!!

Ryan & Lindsay

Amanda

It was a fun night!  Luke & Amanda stayed after the parade to watch a movie.  Saturday night, in bed by 11:00 PM…I was pooped!

Sunday brought more of the same – after church, I did some more baking, had dinner with my mom, and then watched Love, Actually last night.

Oh, how I love festive weekends!

The one thing that sucked about this weekend?

Too.much.food. 

The scale was not kind to me this morning.

Back on the dieting wagon this morning.

*sigh*