Happy New Year!!!

Merry Christmas, everyone, and hope your New Year is brilliant and well worth the waiting for.

We had a lovely, lovely Christmas. One of my favourite pressies that I received was the Piano Guys Album.

I absolutely LOVE these guys and their songs, so this was possibly one of the most thrilling gifts ever. They are some of my most favourite musicians. They LOVE their music!!

I also got a couple Trina Schart Hyman books, which was AWESOME because she is such an amazing artist, and probably my biggest inspiration for my own drawing breakthroughs:

 AND one of my sisters got me The Hobbit Visual Companion!!!!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Now we're celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas, which culminates on January Sixth, the Feast of the Epiphany. In my family, we traditionally save one pressie from Christmas, and leave it under the tree for the entire twelve days of Christmas, and then on the Epiphany the Wise Men come and leave one more gift under the tree. We have a Little Christmas on that day, and celebrate with the Christmas breakfast of orange juice, coffee, and sausages on potato rolls. Yumminess!!

This tradition, for us, started twenty-one years ago. My Grandpa died that year, and my mom went home to stay with her mom during Christmas. She took the baby with her, who was not quite three months old at the time. That was the only time we were not a complete family at Christmas. So, all us kids decided to save one present, so that when Mom came back home after the New Year, we could celebrate a little Christmas with her on the Epiphany. That tradition has continued ever since.

Happy New Year, and God bless all of you!

Love and prayers,

Cat