My Christmas gift to myself

I was unexpectedly able to both start and complete a little outside project that I've been wanting to do for months, just in time for Christmas.  I'm so pleased with how it turned out I thought I'd show you, too.

With a little help from my friend partner, I was able to transform a dead corner of our driveway into a bit of a showplace, despite its continuing rusticity.

Merry Christmas from us to you

Christmas 2014 is upon us, although some of us have been celebrating all month long.  I love the Christmas season and everything it represents.  I love decorating my own house but also seeing what is done everywhere else.

I thought I'd share with you some of the things about the Season that I'm enjoying in my own life.

Having a country Christmas

Our village has an annual Christmas market; and ever since the country dance class got started, they always do a little demo during the market.  It actually was in watching them one year that we got interested in that being an activity for us to try.  Too bad we hadn't started when they did originally, as we'd be a lot more advanced now. 

We had a party instead of a lesson our next class time after the demo, and I thought I'd share how we try to have fun sometimes!

Christmas season kick-off

Having finished our Thanksgiving celebrations of three separate dinners, it was finally time to get into the Christmas spirit of things going on everywhere else around us, as the French don't have to wait until after Thanksgiving themselves. 

So what did we do?  We had another dinner, of course!  Which meant we had to get one holiday packed up and another one set up rather quickly.

Our official Thanksgiving

The American Thanksgiving was the first major holiday we missed when we first moved to France.  So we invited our new French neighbors to share a traditional dinner with us, especially as they had helped us so much just like the Indians did with the original Pilgrims (from whom Doc Leo is directly descended). 

We've been sharing it with the locals ever since, and this is how it turned out this year.