| Written by Paul and Shelia Race for Family Christmas OnlineTM |
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The Christmas TimesTM, the Official E-Mail Newsletter of Family Christmas OnlineTM and Affiliated SitesThis newsletter is for people who like celebrating holidays, especially Christmas. It is produced in conjunction with the following web sites.
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In This IssueOnce again, we have gone too long between newsletters. Last year, you'll remember we moved just after Thanksgiving, and did what we could to make the house look "Christmassy" in a very short time.Well, we've been busy ever since. We did have time to decorate for Christmas, but not time to publish photos. Yet. I hope you don't mind if I post some photos of last month's Christmas decorating in this issue (and maybe the next one). Last year, trying to make our new old house look Christmassy from the road, I draped several strands of lights around the porch. It wasn't quite enough for me, but it was a start. Then, after Christmas, when Ollies marked their Christmas decorations way down, I picked up enough garland to go around the front and side porch railing. Here's what that looked like.
If you can't see the photo, please click the following link: After Christmas, 2016, we spent some time trying to figure out how to make our old furniture work in the new house and so on. After all, we moved from a 7-room house to a 5-room house with one REALLY BIG room. And plumbing problems and other issues, that have also taken up a bit of time. We have been pleased to keep hearing from readers, and they have given us some ideas we hope to say more about in the coming year. This year (2017), we had time to try out more of our old Christmas decorations in the new house - we just didn't have time to post photos of them before Christmas. We also picked up a couple new decorations that we didn't need at prices we couldn't pass up, and found a use for them. Our resources are still being used by people around the world. This past holiday season, a church in Utah used Tess Hoffman's abbreviated version of A Christmas Carol in a reading for a Christmas dinner. Various photographs from our Christmas-theme sites have also been used in museum placards, newspaper articles, collectors' newsletters and more. In addition, a site asked us last year if they could do an audio version of Paul's story "Miranda's Christmas Visitor." We gave our permission, and it's posted at the following link: Sadly, in just a few hours that followed their publication, a dozen other sites copied their podcast and republished it as their own. Dontcha just LOVE the Internet? Still it IS fun to see how far a little grace and warmth can go. Like around the world. Literally! Topics discussed in this update include:
 Magical MantelsMy friend writer Antoinette Stockenberg sent me the link for her 2017 Christmas Mantel, but I failed to get a newsletter out in time for you to see it before Christmas. If you are a fan of cardboard Christmas houses or of novels that take place on the New England seashore, you may already know Antoinette's work. As a writer, she doesn't just set up her little communities - she has a purpose for every figure she sets out, and names and storylines for quite a few. To see her most recent display and read the stories, please click the following link:
In 2016, Shelia and I moved right after Thanksgiving. Shelia did a nice job of decorating, using pieces that had come from the other house. But since Christmas, 2016, we've been thinking about other things that would look nice on our "new" wraparound porch. And when a very nice artificial Christmas tree shows up in the spring for less than a tenth of its original price, and you were thinking about putting a tree out on the porch anyway. . . .
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Scrounging for Front Porch Fun
Groundhogs and Candles and Midwinter Feasts
