This time of the year, is the most wonderful time of the year. When the streets get busy, the snowbirds flock south, and the lines and restaurants get busy.

But it is also that time of the year when families gather to celebrate Thanksgiving, and then we slip into the office lunch celebrations to honor the volunteers, and staff Christmas lunch. Then moving on into Christmas Breakfast with our children and their spouses and especially our baby boy who will hopefully get excited about presents this year. We do little to wish goodbye to the Old Year, and see in the New Year. Amy is so pregnant now that she does not want to do anything but sleep.

And then it is back to work and start the rhythm all over again.

Thanksgiving is not something that we ever celebrated in South Africa, but it has slowly crept up on me and the last two years our daughter in law’s parents have joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. I love to decorate and so I expanded a bit on last years decorations and threw in a bit rust coloring to my look. Despite taking photo’s of the table, I forgot to take photo’s of the food and the people. My priorities were a bit off this year.

All that to say, there were 8 adults and Luka, and there was plenty of good food.

Then we move on to the weekend, and the Christmas tree comes out and the non breakable decorations go up. This year I made it a family tree. I have always wanted to have the names of family members on the tree but some of us have uncommon names and we just can find the spelling here, so I decided to by letters and write their names and dates of birth (and for those that have already left us their date of death) and added it to the tree. I am not a big fan of the white lights cable but I guess I was not in the mood to hide it well when I put it up. I like to do all my decorations when Richard is at work, but he has been at home and watching TV since Friday and I don’t want to interrupt him. I finally go the angel on top of the tree and the decorations on the mantelpiece.

I love it when old friends make an appearance. This year my tree Santa’s are staying out of sight, so I have to make do with the Snowman and the larger Santa. Both of these are going to be used in a project with Luka next weekend.

The last item I managed to get out this weekend was this double tray. For the month of November it had pumpkins in it, but I needed them for the table so I switched out for last years Christmas table decorations and this will sit on my side board.

My table is swamped with things that need to be put up, and I have the Christmas stockings still to be hung but that means I need to dig in my Kist to find the stocking holders. This year I have one for Luka, and today I bought one for the new baby, since we now know that her name will be Ella.

Last but not least, I have a project I would like to try with Luka. It is the stackable boxes where you sit the child in a box and shoot the image and then take each image and stack them in photoshop. It so happens that I bought myself a new office chair and it came in a really big box. So this weekend I lined it with white paper, and put some Christmas balls up, and played around with ideas.

My goal is to get the following images if I can get him to co-operate.

1. Sitting in the box with the Christmas tree.
2. Reading a book.
3. Playing with a train
4. Holding his reindeer
5. With the Snowman (I bought some white balls for snowballs)
6. Sitting on a bench with his stocking behind him
7. Sitting in the box eating a candy cane, with the candy Lane sign behind him
8. Sitting with some presents
9. Sitting with a Merry Christmas sign.

I am not sure that Luka will cooperate to get these done but we are going to try next Sunday. In the interim I have Friday and Saturday to get his ornament picture. Each year so far I have had an ornament made for our tree’s.

This is a circle blog so please follow the link on to see what my talented friend Katherine from Cobert Photography has for you this month. You can see more of their work on Instagram.

So I hope that your Christmas Season is one that is calm and restful, despite the craziness of the season. Tis the season to be merry that is for sure.

Have a good one!

Until week meet again, stay well & Merry Christmas & Happy New Year. May 2025 be a year of blessings for you.