Natale, Christmas, and New Years Resolutions

Ah yes, the all-mighty "summation" blog. Between getting ready for the holidays, work, illness, work, decorating, work, and well, work... I've not had much time to really make any entries to the journal. But I've got some time today (thanks to flaky servers!) so I'm going to try to summup.

I celebrated Natale (Yule, or Inverno - Winter Solstice) with my coven on the 19th. We were going to do ritual. Indoors, of course, because it was too blankin' cold outside for us Florida witches to be outdoors in just cloaks! But Lady Incendia suggested that maybe we simply have a "Yule Party", eat, exchange gifts, and celebrate together without the need for ritual. We all ended up doing this (even though some people, at first, felt they *needed* ritual!) and it was a great time! We had lots of food and lots of fun. We sat around, exchanged presents, got our Secret Befana presents (I got the lovely hand-embroidered snowman dish towel that Rubesca made), and just enjoyed each other's company.

We presented Lady Incendia with the idea for the archway. I'm impressed that she didn't cry - though it really looked like she wanted to. She seemed really impressed that we'd managed to come up with this idea for her, and wanted to do something for the temple area. And she really seemed to like all our ideas that we'd come up with for the design. Well, the ideas that I'd come up with. No one else really contributed a lot to the ideas. They just seemed to go "Yeah, that looks good" when I gave them what I was thinking about.

Either way, she loved it and was moved :) Hurray for us!!! I left really late from her house, which made me a very unproductive worker bee on Monday at work.

It was really nice to spend some quality time with the people in the coven. It was just us (well, and Doug), and we were able to sit around like family and have some time together, without all the hubbub that comes with ritual. I love spending time with them in ritual space, but it's also nice to get together and have mellow time with each other. Definately reminded me of spending time with family up north, so that was a good thing.

I was invited to Yule celebration at Lady Bridget's, but couldn't make it because Doug and I were sharing the plague that Grant had given me. Though now I have a lovely incense burner that I can gift to someone who needs one.

The rest of the week was the final preparations for Christmas. Grant and Doug were going to be at the house, so I needed to make sure it was clean, the presents were wrapped, and there was food. Brayton dressed up like Santa again and came around to give everyone presents. I got a lovely "Great Encyclopedia of Faeries" book. We also did a Secret Santa in our office. Mine got me Bubba HoTep!!! *happy dance* I've still gotta watch that. I loved that movie, and now it's mine all mine!!!!

And my kids at work... they're so wonderful. They got me presents. They didn't have to, but they did. A few of them got me, basically, furniture :) It's a set of shelves that came with all sorts of candles and oils. I haven't opened them yet, but I am dying to try them out. They even had oil burners, tealight lamps and more. Very cool.

A few others got together and pitched in to buy me a disney snowglobe. Not just any snowglobe, mind you. A honkin' big snowglobe!!. I love it! It plays Brahms Waltz, and Cindy's globe lights up and the glitter inside it gets swirled around by a fan. They absolutely went above and beyond the call of duty.

Friday night I started preparing the pork. I used a recipe from Paula Deen. It was so yummy! I have to write it up into my recipe cards. And it was so easy, too! I went to Publix on Friday (MADHOUSE!) and got everything we'd need. That's when I started to really start not feeling well.

I spent some time Wed and Thursday wrapping presents. Gotta make sure everything's wrapped and no one feels gipped. Nothing's worse than someone walking away thinking that they didn't get everything they wanted.

Saturday was pretty mellow. Grant came over, eventually. Doug went and got him. Grant wasn't feeling well (bad hot pocket the night before) so he wasn't overly hungry. Which is bad, cause I had a lot of food. Not that I was feeling at 100% either, but....

So we unwrapped presents, while trying to make Grant feel better. I got way more stuff than I thought I would. I got an iPod and some scrapbooking stuff and some videos. Video games were all over, as were cd's, gift certificates, barbie dolls and more. I finally got Grant to eat something at dinner. When he went home, he asked if we could try this again the next day, because hopefully he'd feel better.

He came over Sunday. I felt like crap, but I made up some plates. He enjoyed the pork and everything else. We watched Rudolph on DVD, played the Disney trivia game he got, and then I passed out.

All in all, Christmas rocked. I've got to finish putting the box together for my family to mail up to them. Mom's already got my box coming to me down here (should be here today, actually!) which is way ahead of the typical April delivery date :)

So now I'm just waiting for New Years Eve, as it is a night filled with Rockin' Eve, Times Square, and pigs in a blanket :)