Oh the weather outside is… frightful?  Delightful? Here in Tucson, it’s pretty much “all is calm, all is bright” most of the time.

A couple of posts back, Liz wrote about the falling white stuff that was happening there on the east coast.  It looks a little different here on the “west coast” .  (I know, Tucson isn’t exactly the coast, but we ARE in the west…the wild, wild west!)  See, we do have lots of green… it’s just in the form of a whole lotta CACTI.  And when Christmas time rolls around…just take a LOOK of how it’s decked out.  Santa Hats.  Kind of silly, really.  But seriously…you can see Santa hats on all KINDS of cacti here.

Really, who decided this was festive?  Not a good look, I don’t think.  And WHO THE HECK climbs up there?  Ouch!!

But the last few days, it’s been pretty cold!  (Well, for us Tucsonans anyway.  Winter and 60 degrees and we are breaking out the scarves, baby!  Kind of fun to wear a fuzzy scarf now and then. We gotta do it while we can.

(And check out this colorful pile of soft warm fuzziness that Mama C brought to me when she arrived for the holidays…. she loves to knit scarves!  Yay!)

Today, the wind blew in and a storm hung around… RAIN!  And tomorrow, we MIGHT wake up to a scenic view of snow on our mountains. Or, we might get something like this.  Either way, it will be nice.  And we won’t need a snowblower!

Ready for yesterday’s winner announcement?!  It’s …… Sarah Vee!!  We need your address Sarah— send it to LizzieBgirls@gmail.com

Baby, it’s COLD outside.  Might have to close our windows tonight!  Comments will be entered to win tomorrow’s present give-away… so let us know what YOUR favorite kind of weather is for Christmas day …?

It’s Birthday time at MY house!  Yes, on top of EVERYTHING else this time of year, my two girls have Birthday’s one week apart.  Here’s a picture of my cuties as we made treats for Adele to take into class today.  One GOOD thing about winter Birthday’s is that there’s a LOT to choose from theme-wise for treats!  We’ve done snowman cupcakes, peppermint cookies, chocolate sheet cake with candy canes…you name it!  Well this year, I decided to do something a little different.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I have time at my computer (or just need to sit and procrastinate!) I totally browse blogs all over the web!  And aside from quilting blogs, my next favorite are COOKING blogs!  I’ll admit it.  I LOVE to cook.  Cooking and baking to me, when I really have the time, is creativity at its best.  And SUCH a huge outlet for stress!  Anyway, you all know I love the Pioneer Woman and her blog, she totally cracks me up and her pictures are SO mouth-watering, I was going through her blog one day looking for ideas when I came across one she wrote about another blogger Bakerella and her trip visiting the ranch!  I was so excited because I vaguely remembered my OTHER sister-in-law Cari (the one so nicely having the in-laws over for the Holidays!) had introduced me to Bakerella’s blog last year when Cari was visiting US for Christmas.  It was one of those things I filed away and forgot about until I stumbled upon it again on the Pioneer Woman’s blog.  It was quite amusing because they had a “Cake Pop Party” at the ranch, which looked like a total BLAST!  And these Cake Pops were SO cute!  They made mini-cupcakes, Hello Kitty pops, chocolate pops, you name it….they were all so cute too!  I went and looked through Bakerlla’s site to see if she had some winter-y treats I could make for my daughter’s class.  She had cute little Reindeer, Christmas tress and Santa hats.  But I wanted to make snowmen!  So I thought, why not just make the cake balls two different sizes, pop both on the stick and make us some snowmen?

Oh boy was it fun!  Just going down the cake baking isle at Michael’s was a treat!  When do we quilter’s ever get to do that???  I didn’t even KNOW half of this stuff existed.  All different size sticks, a million types of sprinkles, molds of every shape and size…even edible marking pens!  I had a blast finding everything I’d need to make my snowmen.  I got the white meltaway chocolates, sparkly sugar crystals, lots of sprinkles, mini-M&M’s, mini-choco-chips and my FAVORITE find….orange colored chocolate covered sunflower seeds!  Do those look just like little carrot noses or WHAT?!

So if you haven’t checked out Bakerella’s blog, you really need to go over there.  You’ll be blown away by her creativity!  And all of her stuff is SO fun.  She also has a GREAT store.  I already put a “bakerella gift certificate” on my wish list for Christmas so I can go buy all this fun stuff and bake some MORE over Christmas break.  Anyway, her revolutionary “cake pop” idea is actually pretty simple.  You bake a cake, let it cool, then brake it up in a bowl, plop some frosting in there and mix away with your hands until it’s all blended.  Cake AND icing all in one!  How is this NOT a good thing?  Then you dip those babies into all sorts of melted chocolate and you have yourself a cake pop.  Talk about making am impression!  The teacher and the whole class were SO impressed.  They think I’m very talented….hahahaha!  No, dear, I just read cooking blogs and get inspired.

Apart from Christmas shopping, party hopping, Birthday planning, treat baking, house decorating, book writing, gift making and all the OTHER stuff we find ourselves doing this time of year…when you have musicians in the family, you’re also bound to be attending winter concerts at various schools.  Am I right?  Well.  We like winter concert time.  It usually means a trip to Starbucks afterwards for their very yummy peppermint hot chocolate!

Who can resist THAT on a cold winter’s night?  This year the concerts were really good.  You know, it’s always hit and miss.  Adele, whose Birthday is today on the Winter Solstice I might add, sang in her 4th grade choir.  Usually, I wouldn’t share this kind of a concert because, well, it probably sounds like all the 4th grade choirs YOU’VE heard, but this year they sang a song their teacher Mr. Haines wrote himself called “Winter’s Wish” .  The song is so cute, and the lyrics are really beautiful so I’m going to post it here for your listening pleasure!

Adeles Winter Concert

The last concert I had to attend was at the high school.  My two eldest are in the Wind Ensemble.  My son plays percussion and my daughter plays the flute.  Every year, they do a stirring rendition of “Sleigh Ride”, which is actually really good!  I’ll post it here as well, so you get to listen to the fun stuff instead of sitting through all the OTHER performances before my kids took the stage!  This was worth waiting for though.

Conestoga Wind Ensemble

Well I’m feeling a cake and ice cream hangover coming on from all this Birthday celebrating.  We have Birthday cakes all OVER the place!  One on the kitchen counter, one in the extra fridge and one outside in the cold, cold garage!  I always try to do that, hey, dontcha want to SHARE a Birthday cake with each other, thing, but it never seems to go over very well.  So let’s pick a WINNER for tonight so I can go pop some TUMS and snuggle under my double duvet bed covers!

BETSY LYNN!!!  You’re the lucky WINNER!  Send us an email: lizziebgirls@gmail.com with your info!

Keep those comments a’comin’!  We still have 3 days to go.  HOLY COW 3 DAYS!  Yikes.  I gotta get wrappin’!

Do you have a cooking blog that inspires YOU?  Please SHARE!

One thing I LOVE about Christmastime is the lights!!  Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved to see all the holiday lights while driving around town.  It was a big deal… I don’t think we had lights on OUR house til I moved away to college.  Dang!!

Since having kids, and from the time my boys were little, we always had one evening during the holidays that we’d bundle up the jammied kids into the car, let the dog hop in, and we’d drive around to see all the “good” displays of the season.

We’d oooh and ahhh, and drive all around (probably until the kids were yawning and we were guaranteed an easy bedtime).

We would always be amazed by the homes that were just completely covered and lit up with the holiday spirit!

It was an annual tradition!

OK, fast-forward those 4 boys a few years, and you can just IMAGINE the excitement.  Teenagers are kind of hard to bundle up in cute footie-jammies and pile into the car.  But we’d try!  Oh yeah, maybe with a few grumbles and groans, but we knew they really loved it but could not admit it. The dog was ALWAYS happy to venture out, though! When we first moved to Tucson, our oldest was in his first year of high school… so that is when the groaning probably began. That’s when we had to step it up a notch.  As in BRIBERY.  In most parts of the country, that might be the promise of hot cocoa and marshmallows or something to warm ya up at the end of a long night in the car.  But in Tucson, it meant ICE CREAM.   That worked for a few years.

This year, we haven’t had time to fit it in yet.  There’s still this week, though!  Heck, we have all of next week too!!  I mean, no one is on the ball enough to take their lights down at least until New Years.

And, just in case… we do our own light display.  

The boys and I are convinced that their dad is trying to channel Clark Griswold, of Christmas Vacation fame, as he hangs the lights.  His goal is to be first and BEST on the block.  (He was first, all right.  I hadn’t even begun to think about Thanksgiving when the ol’ tubs of lights and extension cords were hauled out onto the driveway.  See, here is where teenage boys and lights DO mix…. bribery too, for that matter.  He had the 16 year old up on the tall, tall ladder doing all the vertical work.  But it was only early November.  We wouldn’t let him flip the switch til at LEAST Thanksgiving week!

And I must admit, it is nice to be welcomed home by festive lights after a long day of errands and Christmas shopping!  Just too bad there are no little ones to bundle up these days…

Hey!  Maybe if we go in search of THESE kind of Christmas lights, I can talk those big ol’ boys of mine into driving ME around this year…

Sooooo…. time for the nightly drawing!!

LIGHTS camera action, drumroll, and a big “come on down” to YOU….JOYFUL QUILTER!!! (Pam….we know that’s you!!)  Congrats.

Keep the comments coming (and we are LOVING all the comments by the way)… we still have this whole pile of presents to divvy up and we need 12 lucky quilters and blog-readers to send ‘em to!  So tell us…. lights on your house, or not?!!

SNOW SNOW SNOW!!!  Yes sirree!  It’s a marshmallow world in the winter here on the east coast, I can tell you that much.  We are getting snow and more snow.  It’s GORGEOUS clinging to the branches and piling up on the evergreens.  I’m just going to riddle my post with pics my lovely daughter took!

Here she is, isn’t she a cutie?  (and she just got her driver’s permit yesterday….oh dear!)

I don’t know how it is for you where you live or if you even GET snow, but we don’t usually get TOO much snow here in PA .  I think when I first moved here in the 80’s they only had 2 snow plows in the whole county!  They have a few more now, but I swear they don’t know what to do with them when snow like THIS hits.  So what happens is there’s a HUGE panic when a storm is looming on the horizon and everyone…..and I mean EVERYONE hits the shops the day before.  Yesterday the parking lots were full, full, full.  Not only at the grocery stores like usual getting stocked up on food, but I think Holiday shoppers were trying to get all their shopping done knowing they would by stuck at home today.  Thank goodness I had the foresight earlier in the week to go to Super Suppers and stock up on dinners for my family to last for the next couple of weeks.  What a relief that is!  To KNOW you have meals made up and all ready to go in your freezer.  It made this week SO much more manageable than last week when I could hardly remember my name let alone what was going to be for dinner!  When I saw my kids making peanut butter sandwiches on corn tortillas because that’s ALL we had, guilt kicked me into gear.  And when the snow started to fall, I didn’t have to panic and run to the store!

My hubby was flying back from Hong Kong last night and I was SO worried he wouldn’t make it before the storm hit since he was flying into JFK in New York.  Luckily, the storm was moving UP the coast and hadn’t hit NY before he arrived.  I was thrilled when I heard the garage door open at 9 am (after I got over my initial fright that someone was breaking in!) I heard his voice and all was right with the world.  Well, MY world at least!

I had the most productive morning….baking cookies I haven’t had time to bake and getting some projects cut out to stitch.  My machine was accumulating too much dust, it needed to be USED!  There are so many things I want to make this time of year and never seem to find the time to do it.  Please tell me I’m not the only one!  Like Beth, I’ve been referred to as the Energizer Bunny as well, but I gotta tell ya, lately I feel like someone’s taken my Energizers and replaced ‘em with a crappy no name brand that runs out of juice way too fast!  Either that or one bunny foot got caught on something and all I seem to do is spin around in circles.  Finally today, I feel like I accomplished something.

Believe it or not we actually DID venture out into the storm.  I mean, that’s why you HAVE  4-wheel drive Suburban right?  The roads were a right mess, but hey, we practically had the mall to ourselves!  We got caught up on some Christmas shopping, had some alone time together and got home in time to pop my ready-made meal into the oven.

(On the 6th day of Christmas…) PANIC sets in.  Really.  I can’t be alone in this, can I?!   Christmas is just ONE week from today, and the time to get it together is NOW. I keep up with my family and friends on Facebook, and SO many of them are dreamily talking of baking, wrapping, watching Christmas movies, peacefully quilting.  Really??  REALLY??

(This is no one I know, but see what I am sayin’?)

Not that I doubt my friends.  I am just wondering how THEY got there, while I am still here.  In a chaotic-looking house.  Piles of laundry and stacks of mail and those darn-cute Christmas cards (from those pesky on-the-ball people!) piled on the kitchen counter.

(This is not MY house…but it’s how it feels to me right now.)

So… still presents to wrap, the Santa list to check once/twice/add to, groceries to buy (holy cow!!  We gotta get some food in here!), Christmas cards to send (look for them in 2010…by December for sure!), and the list goes on.  OH, and add to that… even though the hubby is done workin’ til after the New Year, and the kids are outta school…I still gotta business to take care of and bills to pay and book-keeping to do before Dec. 31st.  Not to mention all the volunteer stuff that I do, that just gets bigger and more important at Christmas time. I know, I know—I’m WHININ’…

(Just like this kid.)

OK, now that I’m done whinin’…. let’s pick a winner from yesterday’s comments!  Raquel in Clovis… it’s YOU!  (And don’t even TELL me if you are totally completely ready for Christmas…)  But we do need your address. Send it to LizzieBgirls@gmail.com.

I just need to go to bed, wake up with a fresh outlook. Sometimes I work well under pressure, sometimes not.  And when THAT happens, I just go to bed.  It always looks better in the mornin’!

And… tomorrow, reinforcements arrive.  My mom and dad.  Who always make it better.

A friend commented today that I am like the Energizer bunny.  Yeah sometimes.  But sometimes, ya gotta just recharge.

It’s time. Jammies…check.  Alarm clock…off.  Lights off…yep.  Zzzzzzz…..

(YAWN…. don’t forget to comment to enter the drawing tomorrow.  Tell us if YOU are ready, a whole week early. It’s OK. I can take it….)

You know what else I love about this time of year???  All the CHRISTMAS CARDS that flood the mailbox!  We get to catch up with friends and family who live near and far.  Don’t you just LOVE getting a Christmas card from a friend you haven’t heard from in a long time?  Ok, so now we have facebook and all sorts of other resources online to keep up with friends year round, but still, there’s just something about receiving a card in the mail, don’t you think?  However, if I get a card with a 10 page missive about a year in the life, you can bet that thing hit the garbage can before the seal was even broken!  One year we got a long, long Christmas letter that described the husband’s finishing up of his 89th journal.  I kid you not!  We thought about sending one out the next year that went something like….”And we both THOUGHT about starting a journal for the 89th time….”  Yeesh! Here’s what our card looks like this year.  The letter was typed inside….written in the voice of our dog Pixie.  She’s not real bright, but she was able to string a few sentences together.

Years ago, I started a little tradition of hanging each card we received on the garland around the banister.  I didn’t know where else to put them all! Now I LOVE my card riddled banister.  I keep the cards even and re-hang them each year.  The cards hold so many memories.

I LOVE looking at this one…..wait until Beth sees it!

Look at those boys!  They’re all grown up now!  That’s why it’s fun to glance at this one every year.  Like I said, SO many memories!  I’m not even sure, but I THINK this is from when Beth still lived in Alabama even.  Wow, how time does fly!

Since I moved to France during my first year of marriage and we stayed there for 10 years, we had to start making our own family traditions.  We had to figure out which of our family traditions we absolutely HAD to continue (like the favorite Christmas cookies Beth spoke of!) and then we had to add some of our own along the way.  It was too expensive to go home every year, especially once we started having kids.  And we soon learned that we weren’t the only one’s missing our families at this time of year.  We decided to invite all our “misfit” friends to our house to celebrate the season.  However, the ticket to the party was to bring a homemade ornament for our tree!  Our tree was so scarce, since we were just starting to make memories.  We thought this was a brilliant idea and hoped it wouldn’t keep people from coming.  We were AMAZED at the thought and creativity that went into each ornament!

Here are a few!  One was hand-stitched with bead ornaments on the tree, I love that she added the date too!  The other is actually an empty whole egg shell (the egg was blown out, of course!) rolled in beads.

This one was made by my brother John who lived in Geneva with us for awhile.  I don’t think I would have survived without him there at that time, I had two little babies a year apart and a husband working on his master’s degree! John made his ornament out of chocolate wrappers and ribbon. I’m sure he’s shocked I still have it!  He made the star out of the name plate from his door with his and his flat mate’s last name.  Look at the detail, with that nice red glitter glue!

But these….THESE are my favorites!!!  One of my very dearest friends (whom I also would never have survived without!) made these one year by taking old Christmas cards and putting my kids faces on them.  I LOVE seeing these every year!  And believe it or not, the kids still INSIST on hanging their own!

Aren’t those the cutest things you’ve ever seen???  They just make me smile.  They really do!  So, back to my tradition….all our friends would come to our house bearing these awesome ornaments for our tree.  We’d sit around and tell favorite Christmas stories or share memories of Christmases past.  Of course, the tunes would be playing in the background, then everyone took turns showing their ornaments and hanging them on the tree.  I learned how to make a traditional Bouche de Noel (Yule Log), and since we couldn’t actually buy eggnog in stores there, I had to learn how to make that too!!!  I had lots of hits and misses, but finally worked THAT recipe to perfection!  After the ornament hanging, we’d all enjoy a slice of Yule Log and a cup of eggnog together.  What wonderful memories!

All those dear friends are scattered near and far now.  But we still exchange cards each year and try to see each other whenever we can.  My friend that made me those fabulous cards with my kids faces is also the one who gave me the plaque I posted a picture of at the top.

“Friends are the family one finds along the way”

I’m thankful for the many, many friends who have touched my life over the years and for the big huge family we’ve all become.

(sniff, sniff!)

AND NOW…..let’s  draw another name for our 5th Day of Christmas!  Are you feeling lucky???  Ok…closing my eyes, drawing a name…and the winner is…..

PATSI FOUNTAINE!!!  You know the drill, send us an email so we can send you a fabulous gift!

And remember everyone, keep those comments a comin’….you could be a lucky winner too!  I’d love to hear about YOUR favorite traditions.  Please share!

I loved Liz’s Christmas post about holiday music!  Thank goodness THAT side of the Hawkins’ clan keeps us supplied with new music each holiday season.  Last year, our favorite track on the CD was “The Tacobell Canon.  To the tune of  Pachelbel’s Canon, but all about Mexican food. So with a son who was spending his first Christmas away from home, in Mexico, no less….we just LOVED that song.

You really should watch the video of it here on YouTube… it’s pretty funny.

So, although tacos are not traditionally part of our holiday food (well, I suppose they are now for my son…who is spending THIS Christmas in Mexico too!)…many other holiday goodies conjur up good memories of the holidays.  I am sure the East Coast Office is enjoyin’ the wafting aromas of wonderful baked goodies (well, it WILL be, at some point, when Liz’s schedule slows down a bit too!) but here in Tucson the kitchen is not-a-happenin’.  Heck, I think my family would be happy if I’d just go to the grocery store!  (But the dog is happy…just hauled another big carton of bones home from the pet store.)

But never fear!  We’ll be packin’ on the holiday pounds here too, just like the rest of y’all.  Mama C to the rescue!  For the first time in EVER (since they’ve been married…almost 50 years!) my mom and dad are spending Christmas away from home.  They are trekkin’ to Tucson to visit us.  And guess what she is packin’ along?!  Yep, tins and tins of our favorite home-baked holiday cookies.

You see, it really was my grandma’s joy each year to bake and bake and bake.  A visit to her house was a whole day of just gorging on all the goodies.  All we had to do was head directly to the cookie closet, and whip out the tins.  Each one held another delicious treat after another. I never ever even ENJOYED a Christmas dinner until I was a grown-up… as a kid, by the time dinner rolled around, I was sick from eating all the fudge, divinity, cookies, and other goodies that she had spent weeks baking.’

Some of my fav’s each year were the molasses cookies, which now just remind me of Christmas.

And the Toffee Squares… yum!! (Mama C is definitely bringing some of these!)

The fudge and divinity….ahhhh.  I don’t think I have had divinity in years.  Grandy made the best…light and fluffy and you could just eat it ’til you were sick.  Sick, I tell ya.  And you would still want more.

But the frosted cookies…mmmm, my favorite. Still are.  I tell myself that my boys love them the best too, just so I have an excuse to make lots.  I eat most of them.

I DO know that Liz’s kitchen has been busy lately perfecting the recipe that’s goin’ in our next book.  Book #1 (Whimsyland) has a fabulous chocolate chip cookie recipe within it’s colorful pages… known by quilters now as the “Lizzie B” cookies.  It is a hard one to top!  But I think this next one will be talked about too… shhhh, it’s a surprise…. but we’re calling ‘em the “Be Creative” cookies.

What’s Christmas without all the sugar and fattening stuff to fill up on?  I hope I have time in these next few days before Christmas to bake a little bit.  Or at least do some grocery shopping…

It’s present time!!  There’s been some confusion about our 12 days giveaway… Here’s how we are working it.  We’ve chosen 12 presents… that REE DRUMMOND (The Pioneer Woman) cookbook that is signed to a “Lizzie B quilter” that Liz blogged about on Day #1… some Whimsyland fabric stacks, a Quilter’s Heart Pendant, and other assorted goodies from the Lizzie B studios.  So at the end of our Christmas Days blog-extravaganza… we’ll have 12 names.  We’ll randomly send one of the 12 presents to each winner!!  So it’s ALL STILL UP FOR GRABS!!  Post a comment on each daily blog, we choose a name each day at 9 pm west coast/midnight east coast.

Oh, and the winner from day #3… it’s Shady Brooks!  (She posted the first comment, and the random number picked was #1. Cool!)  Shady, send us an email at LizzieBgirls@gmail.com with your address so we can get ready to send your present!

Leave a comment to THIS post to be entered into tomorrow’s drawing.  What’s YOUR favorite holiday treat, something you just can’t live without each year?

MMMMMmmmmm, now I’m hungry.  — B

For me, Christmas is NOT Christmas without music.  I LOVE the Holiday tunes, I really do.  Yeah, yeah, some of them are schmaltzy and some might make you want to grind your teeth after hearing them for the 100th time that day on the radio.  But I still love them.  For me, a year without music is like a year without Santa Claus!  “I’ll have a blue…oooo-oooo…Christmas, without yooooou!”  I’m sure you get the point.  But before you read ANY FURTHER…..look over to the right of the blog page and you’ll find a little box that says Lizzie B Christmas.  It’s a little compilation of some of my family’s favorite Christmas tunes….get them started while you read!

I grew up in a musical family.  I’m not saying we were like the Von Trappes, the image of an older brother chasing his sister around the house with the spit valve of his trombone paints a more realistic picture!  Most of us sang or played an instrument.  When I was in the 3rd grade and started taking the recorder in school, I played it around the house incessantly!  It’s funny the things you remember, but I recall that the song I played ad naseum was “The Erie Canal”.  I guess it became a little annoying to my mother, what with 5 other kids she had to deal with running around the house.  So she finally suggested I trade in the recorder for a flute.  She described what a flute was and I was excited to give it a try.  I’ll never forget the day my dad brought home my first flute.  It was a Saturday morning and he called me downstairs to come meet him in the living room.  I ran down the steps and skidded to a stop when I saw my dad sitting in the chair with a blue velvet-lined case opened in his  lap.  I swear to you that a beam of morning light shot through the window at just that moment and I saw the most beautiful thing I had ever seen nestled in that blue velvet.  A shiny, brand new sliver flute.  Oh it was gorgeous!  I must have squealed with delight, right?  I’m not sure.  But I DO know I threw my arms around my father’s neck with all the joy a little 8-year old girl could muster.  I couldn’t make a sound out of it then, but I learned.  Boy did I learn!  Thirty-two years later….

Yep.  I’m STILL playin’ it!  This is a picture taken of me tonight.  I sing in a group called The Noteables with my mom and younger sister.  We’re just a local group of about 30 women who put together a program twice a year and sing in our community.  I call it my Therapy group!  Most of the time we’re together we laugh our heads off and no matter how bad the day and how much I’d rather be in my pj’s instead of at practice sometimes….I always walk away feeling like the world is a better place.  We’re right in the middle of Holiday concerts at the moment and the best part is, I get to play my flute.  Or as my one teacher said, I get to make it SING!

All of my kids play an instrument as well.  And so we like to have those instruments represented on our tree every year.

Here’s an electric guitar for my son Keegan.

A piano for my daughter Adele. (She’s learning flute now too!)

Trevor is my little drummer boy.  Except, um, MY drummer boy is over 6ft tall!

And Sienna plays the flute as well, although, I couldn’t find the teeny tiny thing in the tree.  I know it’s there somewhere!  She also plays the acoustic guitar and the piano.  Sometimes you may walk in my house and hear the electric guitar upstairs, the drums in the basement, the piano in the living room and the flute in my studio.  And it could sound like a horrible noise, much like the Grinch felt when he heard the Who’s singing.  But it’s music to THIS mommy’s ears!

And what about my husband?  Is he musical?  But of course!  He melted my heart with a Dan Fogelberg song he used to play on the guitar, “Only the Heart My Know”.  He actually worked in a record store which got him through his teenage years.  And brought a Christmas tradition with him to our marriage.  When he worked at the record store (Ha! do those even exist any more???) every year he’d search for eclectic and new Christmas songs. He’d buy them and put together a cassette tape…..yes, a CASSETTE TAPE!  And hand them out to his friends for Christmas.  He’d try to spruce up the packaging of the cassette every year, and even hand-stitched little draw-string pouches one year !

When we got married, our first Christmas together was in France.  I missed my family terribly!  It was the first Christmas that I wouldn’t be going home and I was INCREDIBLY homesick.  We lived in a dinky studio apartment.  Didn’t even have an oven to bake cookies!  But Doug told me about his little tradition and soon we were hunting down songs for a new Christmas compilation.  It took the focus off the little pity party I was having with myself as I thought of the music and how much fun it would be to share these tunes with my friends and family.  We didn’t have much money, most of our furniture was cardboard boxes with a fabric disguise.  Some friends gave us a little tree….similar to Charlie Brown’s I must say!  We decorated it with ribbon, and tiny candles clipped to the branches.  The music we found that year helped me find the peace I needed and we shared the most wonderful Christmas ever.

All these years later, we’ve kept up Doug’s tradition.  You’d be AMAZED at how much Christmas music is out there that isn’t played on the radio! I hope you’ve enjoyed our little playlist.  Believe it or not, we sang the TacoBel Canon together as a family last year at a Christmas party!  It was quite the show!

AND NOW…….drum roll please……. ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE 2ND DAY OF CHRISTMAS……

Melissa of GallopingCows.blogspot!

C’mon down!!!  Or actually, just send us an email at lizziebgirls@gmail.com with your address so we can get your gift in the mail pronto!

Remember everyone….Keep those comments comin’ if you want to be in the drawing for day 3.  Ooooh this is fun!

Now I think I’ll sing myself to sleep.

AND now! What you’ve all been waiting for…(or have just skimmed down to see…!)  The winner of day 1 is…

Bev of comfycollars.com.

Bev, send us an email LizzieBgirls@gmail with your address.  We’ll randomly pick one of our 12 presents and pop yours right into the mail!

FACEBOOK friends… help boost our fan page!  We’re aimin’ for 1000 fans, and when we get there, we’re gifting someone with a big ol’ bundle of Whimsyland fabric.  Tell all your friends to become a fan of LizzieBcre8ive.  Much thanks!

Remember to comment on THIS post to be entered into the drawing for Day #2!  Have a fave ornament or Christmas decoration?  Share!

Well there’s a lot of Christmas cheer going on in blog-land these days and we thought, what the heck, why not join in the fun???  Who cares that it’s crunch time for book number two?  Who cares that we haven’t actually DONE any holiday shopping???  We have fun Christmas stories to share, past and present.  We have fun PRESSIES to give away.  So let’s DO IT!  Beth and I are going to take turns each day to share some Christmas memories and new memories in the making.  EACH DAY there will be a drawing for a GIFT!  And, since it’s a gift, you won’t know what it is until it arrives on your doorstep and you get to rip into the wrapping paper yourself.  Won’t this be FUN??  I love gifts!  And I have to say, I love gift GIVING even more.  Isn’t it fun to give?  That anticipation of knowing the person you’re giving to is going to just LOVE what you got them?  I can’t WAIT to see who wins!  So here’s what ya gotta do.  Read the blog each day, post a little something.  Share a memory if you’d like!  All the names go into a drawing and we pick a name each day.  We’ll announce the winners the following day.  So KEEP READING!  Now.  Let’s get this party STARTED!

ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS…..

I MET THE PIONEER WOMAN, REE DRUMMOND!!!  Woohoo!  How cool is that???

Notice the little tin with red ribbon in the corner here?  Can you see what’s peeking out underneath it?  That’s right!  It’s Whimsyland!  I got up this morning and actually BAKED THE COOKIES to give to Ree.  Then I got up the nerve to give her a book too!  Told her I had a recipe in there and that she’s an inspiration to quilter’s.  Have you read her blog?  Have you cooked up one of her fabulous meals?  Can you say YUM???  She has such a fun story.  You can read all about the Pioneer Woman right here on her blog: www.thepioneerwoman.com. Then she told me that she’d actually been thinking about having a quilter’s retreat at her RANCH!  How fun would THAT BE???  I made sure she had a Lizzie B business card, you can bet on that!  So I kept my iPhone rolling while she was answering questions.  I’m hoping I’ll be able to post the video here.  It might take some doing before I get it up.  But she is very sweet and charismatic.  It was great to have the chance to meet her!

Believe it or not, the Pioneer Woman is not the only celeb I’ve brushed elbows with this season.  It’s been quite the month so far!  You know how it gets…Thanksgiving ends and the craziness begins!  I don’t know why, but it seems like I get sucked into this whirlwind that doesn’t end until January.  The to-do lists get longer and longer and the days get shorter and shorter!  How does that happen?  Anyway, the first week in December my husband and I were invited to the UNICEF Snowflake Ball in NYC.  Now, I thought, OK, just another business dinner black-tie event.  Right?  WRONG!  I made the mistake of doing a little google search and realized it was a star-studded ordeal!  Red carpet and all.  Holy cow!  Al Roker was the host for the evening.  We saw Bryant Gumbel and his wife, Tea Leoni and her husband David Duchovny, and Mariah Carey to name a few!  Wolfgang Puk was sitting behind me…I swear I tried to hold my phone over my head and very nonchalantly snap a pic, but uh, it didn’t seem to work!  Here are a few pics I WAS able to snap…

The ball was held in this beautiful old building in New York City that used to be a bank.  The snowflake decorations were gorgeous!

There were faces of children everywhere snowflake lights rotated all around us.

These gorgeous vases were the center piece of every table, and on every chair sat a be-ribboned red box, a gift from Bacarat!

Here’s Al Roker!  He was fun, introducing everyone.  He introduced Audrey Hepburn’s son, to give an award in his mother’s honor.  They played a movie of her on the big screens with kids all over the world.  She’s got to be one of my all time favorites!

And Mariah Carey!  Who didn’t even sing to us if you can believe it.  She was there to give out another award.  AND donate a buck or two to UNICEF!

Then Tea Leoni…who really was the main snowflake.  She helps put this whole shindig on every year and works with UNICEF all over the world. She’s amazing.  First of all, here we all were worried about our dresses from Macy’s and Nordstrom and she looked like she threw her hair up, wore barely any make up and was gorgeous!  AND….I had a little conversation with her.  Yep that’s right!  Little ‘ol me.  I was standing near the doors ready to leave, waiting for my hubby to grab the umbrellas as it was pouring rain out.  I had seen Tea Leoni step outside toward a limo and then all of a sudden, she came back in through the door I was standing by and looked right at me!  Well, what was I to do?  Just stare?  NO WAY!  I said, “Did you forget your coat?” Because, well, she wasn’t wearing one. But she replied, “No!  I forgot my grab bag!  And,” she leaned in a little closer as if to share a secret, “…since I paid for a truck, I think I deserve TWO!”  Haha! I had to laugh!  She had donated money to buy an ATV for UNICEF, so I’d say yes, she certainly deserved TWO freebie grab bags at the very least.

So that’s it for my star-studded month so far!  I have to admit, I hope things slow down just the tiniest bit.  This is such a great season and sometimes we get so busy we forget to stop and smell the pine-scented air.  Or stare in wonder like a child at the first flake of falling snow.  Let’s turn up the Christmas music and start feeling the fa-la-la-la!  OH!  And I almost forgot….

Yep!  One lucky Lizzie B Quilter is gonna win “The Pioneer Woman Cooks” Cookbook…autographed by Ree herself!  You’ll never know which day we’re going to gift it….so KEEP entering to win.  Bring on the Merry!

P.S. I’m actually watching the Christmas Shoes movie on TV while typing this….and cryin’ like a BABY.  Yeesh.