Girls Love Fried Pickles: my special guest....

So thrilled to have Jennifer from Just A Girl in the World. Her blog is too cool. I love her "Yummies" section on her blog and you should check out her shop. It has some fantastic scrap booking materials. I am excited that I asked her to post on her favorite Christmas memory. I love hearing childhood memories. They take us back and make us remember how innocent and fun Christmas is supposed to be. Enjoy my friends.

Hi, everyone! My name is Jennifer and I am visiting from Just a Girl in the World today. I am so honored that Dusty asked me to guest post for her! I think she is so funny and love reading her blog.

I am in my mid thirties and live in beautiful Northern California. I am a writer and am currently working on a fiction novel. I enjoy learning new things and seeing new places, and am excited about life in general. I love to bake, make crafty things and find neat items to be repurposed at thrift stores or garage sales. I also love doing projects on my home, which was built in 1950 and is so very quaint.

Ah, Christmas! I have always loved Christmas. It is one of my favorite holidays. From the shopping for other people to the anticipation about what is under the tree, waiting for Christmas was near torture as a child! It didn’t help that my birthday is exactly 5 day before Christmas, my poor parents always tried to make a big deal out of both, but it was hard for Christmas to not overshadow my birthday. After all, it is the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. Who can compete with that?!

My favorite memory was the Christmas morning I woke up to find Santa had brought me a house for my Barbies! I was so excited and could hardly wait to play. It was large enough I could get inside and almost shut it. I of course found out later when I saw these pictures that my mom had actually put this together for Santa, because he had been too busy so he just dropped it off. She had stayed up very late working very hard on it!

This picture makes me smile, because I remember these items and have some of them still. My mom made the bedding for my Barbie bed. She was such a good mom, even if she had to spank me this Christmas for gorging myself on her homemade Christmas cookies. And when I say gorging I do mean eating several layers of them after dinner when she had all ready told me no more. My poor mom. How she made it through my childhood and teen years is beyond me!

Our biggest tradition is that Christmas Eve is our Christmas. While I was growing up, we would do this with my parents and my mother’s parents, which always made it a really special evening. To this day we still do this, although since my parents are divorced it is now my step-dad who is waiting there to greet me when I arrive. We meet at my mom’s house on Christmas Eve, have a dinner around 5 or so, then we open all of our presents. I always enjoyed that when I was growing up, not having to wait until the morning to see what I got! However there was always a surprise or two under the tree from Santa and in my stocking the next morning.

Christmas morning is spent with my dad and his side of the family, where we have the traditional tearing open of presents in our jammies and yummy Christmas breakfast. I remember the first time I spent Christmas morning with them, I was about 29 or so and I enjoyed the whole tradition so much! I had gotten used to doing everything on Christmas Eve, but what a joy it was also doing it the next morning! I feel like I get two holidays!

Although getting and giving wonderful presents makes it such a fun event, now that I am older I really cherish the time I spend with my family. That is the best part.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about my Christmas memories and traditions and would love it if you would come over and visit my blog sometime. I have a lot of exciting things in the works for this upcoming year!

Merry Christmas to all of you and thank you for letting me come visit!