One of the coolest gifts ever…  J.R.R. Tolkien wrote Christmas letters (on behalf of Father Christmas) to his kids for years and years–until they had all outgrown it.  These letters (which are very entertaining and touching) are published with his amazing illustrations in a book called The Father Christmas Letters.  I own the book and…

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing; It makes no noise at all, But softly gives itself away. ~Eva Logue

Sorry I haven’t been posting much of my own creative content lately.  I’ve been a bit busy lately with language classes, Christmas parties, performances, ex-pat get-togethers, etc.  We’ve also had some intermittent power "outages" in our apartment complex again which has made posting a bit difficult.  Please bear with me… "When we were children we…

I couldn’t resist posting this one… (I guess that’s one way to circumvent the whole "naughty" black-listing thing…)

"Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree.  In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall."  ~Larry Wilde, The Merry Book of Christmas

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them…

12 Days of Christmas – Xining Style On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…a giant bowl of mian pianr*. (pronounced mee-in, pee-ar.) On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me…two monks in Nike(s)… On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me…three frisky…

Our first Christmas party with local friends… Last night we hosted our first Christmas party here in China.  We invited two Chinese families we know (one was our house-helper’s family).  A friend with our company also helped plan this event and was the main "speaker" since she’s a LOT more fluent in the language than…

Some friends from the States sent this great Gingerbread House Construction set.  The girls obviously were in heaven.  Not only could they work on a Christmas craft project, but the materials were sweetly edible.  (When you think about it, it’s a wonder more MEN aren’t into building these types of structures.  I guess if you…

Constructing the house was no problem.  Shrinking the girls down so they could live in it was a little trickier…