Merry and Bright

We've been making merry every weekend since before Thanksgiving ...

today has been a day of catching our breath.

Quiet.

Slow.

Easy.

This morning when I woke up,
it felt like a day to make a mental collection of things that make me happy.

First, The Snowman, a short video adaptation of the book by Raymond Briggs.  

It captures perfectly a child's excitement about snow.  

The music in the video is simply magical ... here's just a snippet ... 

I promise it will make you smile.  

When I was little, this ornament hung in the doorway to our kitchen.  It's really a musicbox ... when you pull the string, it plays Silent Night.  Now my kids pull it every time they go up the stairs, and hearing it makes me feel about six years old.

Our bright and colorful collection of coffee mugs already made me happy.  

But I found a new one last week that REALLY makes me happy ... words of inspiration all over it ... and it's BIG.  

Our beverage decanter makes me happy.  It reminds me of LtDan's 50th Birthday party,  

I reeeeeeeeeeally want to fill it up with Christmas ornaments ...
but the lemonade addicts in the house would object.
I wish they made lemonade in Christmas colors.

These perfect white eggs in their lovely blue container 

made me happy this morning.  

These penguin candles make me happy.  My sister gave them to me for Christmas.  

Because she remembers how traumatized I was after watching March of the Penguins, 

wherein we determined that no matter how bad life gets, 

we can always be thankful 

that
we 

are 

not 

penguins.

And our Christmas tree on the front porch makes me happy.  

My friend Angela at Christmas 365 gave it to me.  The tree and a bazillion ornaments!

Holla Ang! 

And this, the view from the backporch, never fails to make me happy.  

The treeline ... and the firepit ... 

and the chairs out there remembering how much fun we've had under the stars, 

and just waiting to do it again.  

It also makes me happy that the day was a little bit gray.

And that it's possible ... just possible ...

that our Christmas may be white!

What's making you happy this Christmas season?