Christmas! I Love Christmas!

I absolutely love everything about the Christmas season.  There are so many ways we can celebrate Jesus, our Saviour with our friends, our family, and our community.  I want to share with you what has been going on in my little world.

For Thanksgiving all our kids were here with us and the day after Thanksgiving the girls and I made wreaths from the grapevines in our yard, collected pinecones and painted some of them.  We painted - we started preparing for our celebrations.  Fun stuff.

One evening we went to the boat parade.  Lots of pretty lights, fun decorated boats. and cold weather!  Yes, it was coat and mitten weather in Florida!

At Bayou George Christian Church, we ladies had our own awesome start of the Christmas season.  We worshipped together, led by Faye and Libby.

We invited Panama City Christian Church and Eastside Christian Church ladies to join our "Christmas Gathering" and we had 38 beautiful women!  It was such a fun evening!

We had a chocolate fountain.  See Darbey checking it out?!  She kept it going for us.  Fruit, cookies, cake - all to dip into chocolate - yum!

We each did some glass etching.  We etched snow flakes and Christmas trees and holly with berries.

Debbie Lanning, from St. Pete, came and spoke about Gathering with friends and family and remembering the reason for the season.

And, of course, the Melton household put up a Christmas tree and some lights outside.  We have three big snowflakes we put in our windows that I just love!  

 This is a cut out of Holly's hand a a picture of her when she was two.  

 Here is Lindsey' hand.  

 A picture of Lindsey, made at school.

 Picture ornament of Mark.

 A reindeer by Mark.

Here are the lights off our front porch.  Red on the post and color on the bushes.  We did not do alot of elaborate decorating this year.

Church had an adult Christmas party/white elephant party.  We had finger foods and games.

 We played "Name That Tune"  by Jim - the songs were played as they sound in his head.  It was very interesting!

 The white elephant gifts were a combination of interesting things: pumpkins, golf towels, back massage chair, curling iron, t-shirts with team logos, and more!

I did not get a picture of our food!  But it was scarfed up.   

 Bacon Wrapped Smokies.

1 pound of smokies

1 pound of bacon - cut each strip in thirds

2 cups of brown sugar

1 stick of butter.

Wrap each smokie in a third piece of bacon.  Place on baking tray.  

Melt 1 stick of butter.  Mix one cup of brown sugar in the melted butter.  Pour over bacon wrapped smokies.  

Sprinkle 1 cup of brown sugar over smokies and put in oven at 350 for 20 minutes then up the temp to 400 for about 5 to 10 minutes to make bacon crisp.