Happy New Year!!!!!!!!
May 2010 bring good health, loving family and friends, healthy routines, renewed passions for the things you love, and the feeling of wonderful connections you can find with the ones you love and who love you!

Annual Christmas Mood Setting Day

Every year my Mom and I spend a day around Christmas going somewhere to browse, ooh and ahhh over Christmas decorations and cute shops.
This year as we are both broke we went to Jackson Square Antique Mall in La Grange, IL. We reined ourselves in to just a very few purchases; but we took lots of pictures of things we would buy if we were really going to town!
I definitely would have bought this little Santa doo-hickey. I would have said "oh, this is very Mary Englebreit" and away we would go!
There was lots of fun Christmas jewelry.
Fun threads!
I thought this was a great idea. Frame a piece of old Christmas wrapping paper in a clear simple frame.
If you know me, you know that I could not pass this up! It is a cut out from an old magazine. It was only $2. Had to have it.
Same story, second verse!
This is one we left behind but I really liked it.
Love vintage graphics!
This lady would have definitely gone home with me. Isn't she gorgeous? They were selling her with an expensive frame though.
Gather round all of you nostalgic Chicago Christmas shoppers, here are some boxes from Marshall Field's. Nothing says Christmas shopping like these do! If I was still in my hoarding stage I would have bought these and then wrapped my Mom's Christmas present in them every year.
Here I am with some flashbulbs. Another great memory!
Fake fur wreath with pheasant feathers. Who would have thought that this was cool? Not me, until I saw it.
Here is the "My Grandma had that" portion of your visit. So cute!
Lastly, here is my other minimal purchase. I am going to turn this book into a journal. (I finally sent some books off to my Dad so he can start on the project!)

I might not be back here until after Christmas, if that is the case I am wishing you all of a very Merry Christmas!!!!!

love
laura

Best Christmas Album ever!

Would you like to listen to the most glorious and beautiful Christmas music around? Well, here is the album (it is also on CD for you newfangled folks). More than anything, this music reminds me of being a kid at Christmas. It encompasses all of the many themes of Christmas; the glorious birth of Jesus, the feeling of family traditions, and the excitement of a child on Christmas morning to see what Santa has brought. Check out your local libraries or Amazon.com; I am sure you can find a copy. Let me know what you think!

NEW BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT

I have been fiddling around with a second blog for some time now but just couldn't get it quite right. It started out as a cross-stitch trade blog; but I decided to just have giveaways for those charts.

Then I saw some other blogs with these newfangled backgrounds and found out they were free??? So, I was playing around with those and that is a ton of fun. I really wanted to use them on a real live blog (and do not want to change the classic look of Maude and Mozart) so I came up with an idea.

Every year since 2000 I have been making a Top 10 List of the books I have read that year. I figured that this new blog would be a good way to keep track of all those book lists and I can even put up bookish information any old time. So........announcing the start of the LET'S READ blog. Hope to see you over there!

Today I had an ice cream sundae with coffee ice cream!!!! Need I say more?