{"id":1289,"date":"2010-12-07T04:44:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T04:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/katrina.effexhost.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/07\/christmas-is-coming\/"},"modified":"2025-01-11T02:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T02:35:11","slug":"christmas-is-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/07\/christmas-is-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Is Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjBGoDhNoLMX9OTKr5KcUSB5QXOarwCkUJwK3hkTuG9exjTYMWYc6O6r3uabXb7Thlzhc4wPoSIYLLfl_nW2YTxjD557OWozFDSF6phDZ7vfcc0YBRsnCblbig_yZ0qbnWWgFgOfSZY7jow\/s1600\/01xm5.png\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjBGoDhNoLMX9OTKr5KcUSB5QXOarwCkUJwK3hkTuG9exjTYMWYc6O6r3uabXb7Thlzhc4wPoSIYLLfl_nW2YTxjD557OWozFDSF6phDZ7vfcc0YBRsnCblbig_yZ0qbnWWgFgOfSZY7jow\/s1600\/01xm5.png\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Can you believe that it is now less than 3 weeks until Christmas? Where the heck has this past year gone? I&#8217;m not even sure where the last month has gone. I keep thinking I just wrote here and then I come over and bam! it&#8217;s been something like three weeks. I need to do better. I&#8217;m doing pretty good with making the changes within the house and I&#8217;m going to keep doing that and I&#8217;m hoping to add in more blog stuff soon. If nothing else, I want to start doing my Wednesday photo posts again. Photos make me happy and happy is good. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Now, I know it&#8217;s not Wednesday, but I just have to share some photos with everyone. I think I may..no wait, maybe I didn&#8217;t. Ok, I need to give some background here. I&#8217;ve been divorced now for about 4.5 years. About 3.5 years ago, I moved out of the &#8220;family home&#8221; and moved to Buffalo. I didn&#8217;t put up a tree for the two years I was there or last year because the apartment didn&#8217;t have enough room and this house was in total chaos at this time last year. This year, when I went looking for my bin with all of our Christmas tree ornaments, I was dealt a pretty harsh blow. It&#8217;s gone. The tote that held all of the boys&#8217; ornaments and all of the ornaments that I&#8217;ve had since I was probably a toddler. They&#8217;re gone. As you can imagine, insert devastation here. Then, I took a deep breath and said no, I&#8217;m not going to wallow in this. Yes, it sucks in more ways than a person can imagine, but it could be so much worse. My friend Jenny just lost her husband and is looking towards a Christmas without him. There are people who can&#8217;t give their children food, let alone presents or a tree.<\/p>\n<p>So what did I do? I put out the word on Facebook that I was looking for anyone&#8217;s spare ornaments. My father&#8217;s cousin and his wife went through their ornaments and found some for us. I went digging through my holiday totes and found some that I&#8217;d gotten last year at Goodwill. I think I&#8217;d planned them for a craft project, but now they&#8217;re happily shining on our little tree. We didn&#8217;t put up the big tree this year. This house just isn&#8217;t made for a 6&#8242; tree. We did have a great spot for our little 3-4&#8242; tree though. Now, without further ado&#8230;I&#8217;d like to introduce you to our tree&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/craftsbykatie\/5240311180\/\" title=\"Tree Closeup by kroets, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tree Closeup\" height=\"500\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5163\/5240311180_4d28b41538.jpg\" width=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/craftsbykatie\/5240310726\/\" title=\"Finished Tree by kroets, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Finished Tree\" height=\"500\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5049\/5240310726_526c93f9ab.jpg\" width=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/craftsbykatie\/5239714057\/\" title=\"3D Star by kroets, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"3D Star\" height=\"375\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5089\/5239714057_2d9a20cda8.jpg\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/center><center><br \/>\n<\/center><br \/>\nYes, those are popcorn strands. I sat on my couch, watching the boys play games, smiled and fed a needle through hundreds of pieces of popcorn. I thought about how thankful I was to my mother for giving me her ancient air popper so many years ago. When I needed it, it was right there in the cupboard. I also made that huge 3D star. I had no idea it would turn out as big as it did, but we love it no matter.<\/p>\n<p>As we go into the holiday season and the crazy rush that sometimes happens, I want to ask my readers for two things:<\/p>\n<p>1. If you have leftover ornaments that you&#8217;re not going to use or that you just don&#8217;t love anymore, look for a family who can use them. As I&#8217;ve said on Facebook, our family is hosting the &#8220;Ornament Rescue Program&#8221; for this year. If you have ornaments that you would like to share with our family, drop me an email and I can send you our address. If you have some that you just want to share, check out your local <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freecycle.org\/\">FreeCycle<\/a> group.<\/p>\n<p>2. The next time you walk by one of the bell ringers outside of a store, drop in your loose change. You have no idea how far that change can go. If you live in an area where those people don&#8217;t exist, look around online. There are so many charities that can use a helping hand not just now but all year long.<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>Happy Holidays, everyone. Hopefully I&#8217;ll be back soon!<\/div>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s227.photobucket.com\/albums\/dd163\/kroets\/?action=view&amp;current=Name2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Photobucket\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/i227.photobucket.com\/albums\/dd163\/kroets\/Name2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can you believe that it is now less than 3 weeks until Christmas? Where the heck has this past year gone? I&#8217;m not even sure where the last month has&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2588,"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/2588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}