![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.marysthread.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/SantaPuzzle.jpg?resize=640%2C427&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIt was downright magical with a little cabin, now replaced with something more grand as you can see here, where you wait in line forever to visit Santa meanwhile, meeting the elves, Mrs. Claus, and having hot chocolate and cookies and candy canes. There are even real reindeer in the front yard! You can learn more about the Santa House here<\/a>. It is still there and much more elaborate than when I was little! <\/p>\n\n\n\n In our family, our favorite traditions for Santa are leaving out some cookies and milk for him, and carrots for the reindeer. As an adult, I will say it is most fun, after setting up the presents under the tree and filling the stockings, to nibble some bites off the cookies and leave plenty of crumbs behind alongside the empty milk glass. We always make it looks like Santa just couldn’t finish the cookies because he has been served so many treats all night! <\/p>\n\n\n\n And my other favorite thing is making really fancy writing on the “Santa presents” to differentiate them from the the normal presents. My mom and dad used to do this for us too, but their elves had super wiggly writing like all the elves has palsy! Here are a couple of tags from my Santa’s elves. They have very curly writing…<\/p>\n\n\n We don’t make a super big deal of believing in Santa in our house…once every couple years we get a Santa picture, and we really admire a house in our neighborhood that has a window projection of Santa “at work” in their front room…it is a really cool and almost lifelike effect. But we are pretty gentle about it all being a fun game that represents and love and generosity of the season. My little kids still “believe” in Santa, and my big kids still want to…at least they refuse again this year to graduate to being Santa’s helpers. (the biggest kids are Easter bunny helpers hiding the eggs for the past couple years. But Santa is somehow more special and they don’t want to help yet. They still want the magic of Christmas morning, Santa or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One last thing to share about Santa is, last year we discovered the Tolkien work “Letters from Father Christmas.” It is absolutely charming…a series of letters written over many years to Tolkien’s children recounting all of Father Christmas’ adventures at the north pole with his friends, most especially the great North Polar Bear. Anyway, if you need a new Christmas book, get it<\/a>. It is lovely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My Christmas stitch to share with you is Rudolph and Friends, another design from Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle and Thread. It will eventually be finished as a pillow.<\/p>\n\n\n I seem to have enjoyed With Thy Needle and Thread this year as it looks like I’ve finished several items from her. They are always nice, relaxing stitches for me, and I think her Christmas designs are really among the nicest. I have a companion piece for this one, the freebie called Merry and Minty.<\/a> I believe it is still available on the Facebook page for admirers of WTNT so if you are a member over there, check for it in the files. If the link works for you, enjoy it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wishing you all the happiest of Christmases this year! “God Bless Us, Every One!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Only 4 days until Christmas friends, how can that be? If you are seeing this post with no or not very many pictures, you know things have been too crazy at my house to manage it, but hopefully that will not be the case! We are in the midst of our post-flood remodel and so in a calm moment before […]<\/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":[83,225],"tags":[6,146],"class_list":["post-6406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-hop","category-finished-2023","tag-christmas","tag-with-thy-needle-and-thread"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6406"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6412,"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6406\/revisions\/6412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marysthread.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.marysthread.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/img_2023-12-19-135114-1.jpg?resize=640%2C640&ssl=1\")
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