We’ve had a nice little Christmas season here in Dawson City. This year, we were destined to have fewer presents under our tree anyway (thanks to the Canada Post strike), but we recently got ourselves some new fancy Garmin watches, so that works!

Our neighbours have been away for the holidays, so I’ve been watching their place, feeding and playing with their cats, and keeping the water pipes warm, and drains flowing.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I was out shovelling in front of the house I’m watching, and our other neighbour Sylvia spotted me and brought over a homemade rum cake for us! Wow! I was suddenly so full of a sense of community and love for our community and everyone in it. We took the biggest leap of faith moving here and found everything we were seeking and more. It isn’t easy to be away from family, particularly during the holidays. But the rest of the time we have a community of people who know us, invite us to dinner, give us rum cakes, and come over in a pinch to get us out of a pickle. And we volunteer in our community, donate when a community member needs help, support our local businesses, babysit, and love our friends and neighbours!

Anyway, enough gushy gushing. Back to the holidays.

Craft Night

One of my girl friends had a couple of us over for our annual holiday craft night! We tackled gingerbread houses again this year, but last year we did poptarts and candies, and they were so difficult. This year Janet found a kit where the pieces were all foam! We can do this!

And then we decorated gingerbread cookies!!

My friends are seriously crafty, and I’m really not very good at most crafts, but I did okay!

It is always such a treat to see my friends’ festive houses. So many lovely decorations!!

Feasting

‘Tis the season of eating and feasting and eating more. It’s kinda ridiculous, isn’t it? But luckily it comes just once a year, and it is timed perfectly with our season of cold and darkness when there is nothing better to do.

We were invited to our friends’ place a few days before Christmas for a lovely turkey dinner. Just look at this lovely turkey Liz prepared! We brought over a pumpkin pie I made and some ice cream!

On Christmas Day, we planned to spend Christmas with a bunch of self-titled misfits. We wanted to host again this year, but our house is kinda small for a group of 8 plus, so we (Jeff) cooked a big turkey and dressing and we went to our friend Kyle and Ags and Cerys house for the afternoon and evening.

The turkey turned out brilliantly! Of course it was done a couple hours too early, but Jeff kept it warm and it was perfection!

There was so much food! Everyone made dishes and snacks and treats!

I got to play with Cerys’ new Barbie camper!!

Look at this beautiful plate!

Two of our friends teamed up to make a Rummoli board! We were all instructed to bring our dimes and we had a Rummoli battle, for hours! It was so much fun!

Puzzles

Julie gave me a beautiful Christmas scene puzzle when I was home in Ontario, and I’ve been waiting every day to be able to finish work before the holidays, clear off my desk, put away my computer, and dump out the box of pieces.

Only when I opened the box, there were 24 boxes inside!

It turns out that this was an advent calendar puzzle!

What a dilemma though! Do I make this puzzle a box at a time!?

I started with the first box while I weighed it over.

This puzzle has so much darkness, and similar scenes, and the picture itself was pixelated, like it didn’t have enough resolution when blown up to puzzle size.

So I just kept going, box by box, until it was all done!

Beautiful!

Except it was December 27 and now I had finished my Chrismas project far too soon.

Our This ‘n’ That store was closed for the holidays, and they have all the best puzzles and craft supplies. But Maximillion’s was open! They had only a few puzzles left, and the pickings were slim! Transformers, or some fish, or an ID sheet of shells. Or this one!

OK it was $39.99 but it had to happen!

Every holiday I binge watch a new TV show while I puzzle. This year it is “Parenthood” on Netflix. Mostly because Lauren Graham (Lorelai from Gilmore Girls) is in it, and I’m a big fan of hers. I’m enjoying the show and I’m already on season 4.

Anyway, back to The Golden Girls….

It was a tricky one! I needed to come up with a new strategy. Usually I do the outside first, but they were all the same! So I put together that yellow frame first. It had a gold to white gradient that was different on each side, so that helped a bit. Then I was able to eventually piece out the border. And the ‘I <3 MIAMI’ shirt. Then the green alligator. And the faces weren’t too hard, although for awhile I had an extra eye. Some of the pieces fit together when they weren’t right, so that helped make it tricky! Even more so, the fact that the dimensions were more tall than wide made the top part a little trickier to reach.

But then it was done and with a few days of holidays left, it was time to end the streak of eating and being lazy.

Yesterday I dove back in and did a strength workout for over an hour, and then walked Hank for a little over another hour.

Yeah so today I can’t easily pick anything up off the floor. Or even easily get up off of a chair.

But it was worth it! Exactly what I needed to get my head back on straight for 2025!

Because today it is New Year’s Eve! We’ve had a treat with warmer weather for the holidays, but now it is taking a turn with some -40’s coming up in a few days. I can’t tell that the days are getting longer yet, but it’s only a couple of weeks until the first glimpse of the sun will return!