23days 09hrs 10min 38sec...

Today is December 1st.  That rolls off the tongue sweetly.  It seems like I've been waiting a lifetime for December to show up, and now it's finally here!  I can safely talk about Christmas, decorations, and presents and nobody can tell me to shut up or scoff because it's too early "for that kind of talk".  Our recent dusting of snow adds to the holiday atmosphere, along with seeing more houses twinkling at night.  I put up our tree and decorations yesterday.  It felt good to lug up those boxes from the basement and dig through them.  It was like recovering buried treasure every time I unwrapped a Christmas ornament from it's newspaper shell.  The tree was adorned with its usual colored and white lights.  My mom and I compromised when it came to the tree:  she likes white lights the best, while I like colored lights.  I have to admit that the mixture of the two on the tree look better than either color by itself.  After the lights, I sent gold and maroon ribbons cascading around the tree.  Glass bulbs and lots of candy canes polished the whole thing off.  By the way, candy canes surprisingly still taste pretty scrumptious after two years!

Normally, once I've finished decorating, our living room looks like Christmas threw up everywhere.  This year however, I had to put the kibosh on that method due to the fact that our cats seem to break everything by knocking it over.  I made up for the lack of decor in the living room by sprucing up my own bedroom.  Colored lights and bulbs hang around a rough perimeter of the ceiling, with my hand made ornaments dangling down.  Christmas candles perch on every available space, and a great maroon bow adhered itself to my bookshelf.  Some may think it looks tacky, but I absolutely love it.

Today's Christmas Countdown tid bit is a game called Dirty Santa.  Now I've never heard of this game before (although I think I'm in the minority on this one), but I thought it sounded like a lot of fun.

How to Play Dirty Santa

1. Everyone playing the game brings a wrapped gift so there is no indication about what is inside. Place the gifts together under the tree or on a table.
2. The host writes a number on scrap pieces of paper for every gift and places them in a basket, bowl or hat.
3. Each person draws a number. Getting a higher number is actually better because you will have more opened gifts to choose from.
4. The person with #1 picks a gift to open from the pile. The person with #2 can choose to open another package or steal the gift from #1. If a gift is stolen, the person who had it then steals from someone else or picks another gift to open.
5. The game continues like this until everyone takes a turn opening or stealing a gift. The last person to go can steal from anyone in the game or open the remaining gift.
6. Once a gift is stolen three times, it is retired from the game.