Found the Missing Christmas Toilet Paper Roll . . .

A month before last Christmas I found this little beauty in a grocery store, Winco to be exact, and convinced my Mom this would be fantastic for our annual Christmas Eve party.  A toilet paper roll filled with Christmas jokes.  I planned to quietly put it in the guest bathroom and wait for the reactions.  But alas, I forget, and it was discovered last February or so, moans of missed opportunities escaping my mouth.  And then it got lost again.  Last week I found it once more in a closet as I searched for crochet needles for my sister-in-law.

So this year, on Christmas Eve, I'm going to make sure this toilet paper gets used!!

And hopefully there will be much laughter.

:D

But It's Not Even Christmas Yet!!??

Last night in a last minute Christmas food spree to Walmart I ventured down the candy isle with my Mom and sister-in-law Krista, picking out some goodies for today and tomorrow.  In a show of holiday spirit all the Christmas candy was ceremoniously replaced with Valentine candy, beckoning costumers to the front of the store for the red, white, and green variety.

And it's not even Christmas yet!

It's not even New Years!

Or groundhog Day!

(Groundhog Day is the least appreciated holiday of the year. 

But maybe this simply adds to the quaintness of the holiday and a repeated viewing of a certain Bill Murray movie.)

I'm not mentally prepared to even think about Valentines day.

It brings out the cynic in me. Blah.

(I just realized I'm the scrooge of Valentines . . . need to change my attitude.)

But seriously, I like my holidays one at a time.  Yet, I still can't believe today is Christmas Eve and tomorrow Christmas day.  It doesn't seem possible.  Next week is 2017, which seems crazier still.

Today's a full day.  Cleaning.  Wrapping.  Cooking.

There's ribbons and bells stationed at the desk I'm writing at.  Presents all around with tissue paper and boxes.  Every year my Mom and I remind ourselves not to procrastinate, and every year we fail.  Kinda takes away from the spirit of it all.

Tomorrow will be a simple day.  No major festivities.  Time with family.  Snowed out by the upcoming Winter storm moving in this evening.  Church.

Sullivan Boutique messed up on an order I made recently, and they sent me a music CD to make up for it: Thank You, Say it With Music.  Really nice of them to do that.  I'm listening to it now, and it's lovely.

Sometime today or tomorrow I'll need to grab my copy of Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories, including the story about Anne's puff sleeves.  I'll need to read it while I glance at the snowfall.  That would be nice.

Merry Christmas Eve!

And for those living in the Winter Storm warning areas, travel safely.

Someone Wished Too Hard for a White Christmas . . .

 So, is the magnitude of our little white Christmas in northern Utah due to a single person wishing too strongly? Or a conglomerate amount of wishers getting carried away?

I, for one, didn't join in the wishing this year.  Last year was magical enough.  In 2014 we didn't get our first "stick on the ground" snowfall until Christmas Day, and it was beautiful.  This year, as predicted by farmers almanac, we're having a wetter, colder season, and with that more snow.  We've been "hit hard" a couple times already, though after last Friday I'm redefining "hit hard," though if I lived in Alaska or Canada or Norway or Greenland I would probably scoff at our latest snowfall as mere flurries.

Still, when I heard on the news we would be getting snow on Christmas the child in me got excited.  When my Dad looked at weather predictions on his phone during our Christmas Eve feast, announcing we would be getting about six inches, the adult in me who hates driving in snow got nervous.

We didn't get six inches.  I think we got about a foot of snow.  Sundance Ski Resort got around 19 inches.  Merry Christmas to all those people who skid uncontrollably to the side of the road.  Thankfully I remained safely home-bound on Friday.  White Christmas's are romantic and all, but they're not without their perils.

 The snow wouldn't stop falling Christmas Eve through Christmas Day.

The above photograph was taken just past midnight.  It was so bright outside I didn't need a flash to take the picture, simply letting in natural light.

 And this picture was taken around 2:15 am.  I didn't want to sleep.  Presents were wrapped the night before, so that wasn't keeping me up, I just wanted to look outside.  The World looked so peaceful and calm.  "All is calm: All is bright."  Watching snow fall is really quite hypnotizing.

 Really beautiful.

(As a note, I don't know why it's so bright when it snows.  I assume it's light pollution bouncing off snowflakes, illuminating everything.  It's a phenomenon I haven't gotten use to.  My brain freaks out at 2 am when there's so much outside light flooding into my room that I mentally think it's 7 am.)

 So. Much. Snow! 0_0

The nice thing about living where it snows is that the great outdoors become an icebox.  I put our party drinks on the snow to chill, saving room in the fridge.  Though, heh, I waited too long to get these Sprites.  They had completely sunk down, and I wasn't thinking and fished them out with my bare hands.  So cold!  I just left them on the pavement, not wanting to brush off the snow.

Christmas Eve, mini movie review

Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

In Christmas Eve, the latest movie by Mitch Davis (The Other Side of Heaven) and produced by Larry King, six groups of people find themselves trapped in New York elevators during a power outage on Christmas Eve.

There's comedy, romance, angst, drama, intrigue, new revaluations, etc.  Everything you would want in a movie.  Only in Christmas Eve there's a little too much of everything.  Each plot is spread thin as each character competes for screen time.  This movie boasts an impressive/fun cast, including Patrick Stewart, James Roday, Jon Heder, among many others.  The cast overall is quite large, and with them spread between six elevators there's only so much that can be done in terms of quality of plot.

In some ways this keeps the pace moving.  As soon as the goings on in one elevator begins to wane the movie jumps to another elevator to "catch up."  But also, because there are so many elevators we're watching, and because some elevators are more interesting then others, I would at times get bored with what was on the screen, wishing to see what was happening on another elevator, only to not see said elevator for quite some time.

And, in conjunction with the above statement, there are so many story lines and characters being thrown at us, so many plot points never get tied up.  Quite a few plot lines or character motivations are never explained.  For instance, what is the back story with the mermaid tattoo, hinted at but remaining a mystery throughout the end credits?  Why did the character played by Jenny Oaks Baker, an incredible violinist, not want to play Silent Night, first playing it in staccatos, only to then play the song with full power and emotion?  A great musical interpretation of a song with the hinting of a deeper plot, but no real follow through.

There's a lot of "no real follow through" with many plots, and with that comes many missed opportunities.  Sure, the realities of life wouldn't tie everything up in a nice little bow, regardless of the Christmas season, all in one night.  So the problem truly lies in how over stuffed this movie is with no room to breath.

Christmas Eve has the amazing actor Patrick Stewart, one of my all time favorites.  His plot finds him trapped in an elevator, up in a high rise, alone.  His elevator is on the outside of the building, completely exposed to the elements (which, by the way, how did he not get hypothermia?).  His role is incredibly undervalued, and contains some of the biggest loose threads when the film is over.

Were there good moments?  Yes.  I laughed and cried.  And some of the Christmas themes touched my heart.  I enjoyed much of the film, but it left me wanting.

Christmas Eve is available on Digital HD and On Demand, including iTunes, GooglePlay, Amazon Instant Video, Dish Network, Direct TV, etc.

MPAA: Rated PG for some peril, thematic elements and language.