The Little Christmas Elf

If you're interested in adding a new picture book to your collection this year, check out The Little Christmas Elf. Written by Nikki Shannon Smith and illustrated by Susan Mitchell, this Little Golden Book is a delightful story. Nina, the smallest elf in Santa's workshop, doesn't finish the teddy bear she's been making in time to be loaded onto Santa's sleigh. He encourages her to not give up, so she works late into the night to finish it, even after Santa has left to deliver presents. Finally, her teddy bear is complete, just in time for Santa to return in need of one more present. It's an adorable story and a must have for any LGB fan or collector.

Nikki is a friend of mine via Facebook and she's just as sweet as her book. I was surprised to learn that The Little Christmas Elf was her first published work. Getting in with Little Golden Books isn't easy and she explained that she had been at a writer's convention over a year ago where she had her manuscript critiqued. She had almost given up on it when she received an email from an editor at LGB asking if it was still available.

Success stories like Nikki's are encouraging to me as a writer of picture books. In addition, I'm also a huge fan of Little Golden Books. When I found out Nikki's book was going to be published by LGBs, I knew I'd have to add it to my collection. For me, having a book published by them would be a dream come true, just as it is for Nikki. Dreaming wildly for a moment -- I could totally see my first story, Manny the Mountain Goat as a Little Golden Book. Who knows -- maybe that dream might come true sometime. You can find The Little Christmas Elf at any bookstore. I found mine at Walmart.

Holiday Baking

What are some of your favorite holiday goodies that you like to bake? We recently made gingerbread men as a school project. It's always fun for the kids, but the cookies usually come out pretty non-traditional looking, as you can see. We had skeleton gingerbread men, several Harry Potter ones, even one with cat ears. Not your run of the mill gingerbread men, in other words. Everyone eats them though, so they never stick around too long.

We also make sugar cookies this time of year, but we'll probably be doing that later next week as it gets closer to Christmas. After the gingerbread man fiasco, I need to stock back up on ingredients. I'm thinking of making some Candy Cane Cookies today. The kids like those. And if I'm feeling really adventurous, I might try to make some sugar-free ones for myself using soy flour instead of regular flour to help cut down on some of the carbs. Last night Rick made a batch of peanut brittle, which turned out really good. My all-time favorite Christmas treat is Divinity, but I haven't figured out how to make a low-carb, sugar-free version of that yet. 

How about you -- do you do much baking this time of year?

Critters of Montana Calendar

Critters of Montana 2012 Calendar by RenaJean

Yesterday I received an order I placed from Zazzle. I designed two different calendars for family members for Christmas. I was really surprised how well they turned out. I don't know why because everything I've gotten from Zazzle has been very high quality. I hope my family members enjoy the calendars. I ordered the largest size with the photo and month on the same page. They turned out really nice.

The calendar pictured here is one I have for sale in my Zazzle store, although it's different than the ones I made for my family. This one features photographs of animals I've taken since moving to Montana. The animals included are bears, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, owls, moose, squirrels, deer, chipmunks, pronghorn antelope, and elk. It's designed for 2012, but I have the customize option left open if anyone wants to make changes.

Calendars make great gifts for Christmas. I hope I can make others for more of my family members next year. The quick service and quality of Zazzle has impressed me every single time.

Christmas Bokeh

I'm on a homeschool message board and one of the forums there is for photography lovers. Each week there's a fun assignment -- like photograph a favorite Christmas ornament, show an example of unusual lighting, seasonal pictures, and so forth. Well, right now the assignment is Christmas Bokeh. I've never really played around with bokeh shots much. In all honesty, I'm a point-n-shoot type photographer. Heck, most of the time I take my wildlife pictures from INSIDE my house!

However, I thought it would be fun to see if I could get any bokeh shots with my simple, little camera. If you don't know what bokeh is, click here. Bokeh is Japanese for blur or haze. Basically, from what I can tell, it's when you photograph something and there's a blurred effect in the out of focus area of the picture. At least that's what I think it is. The link is from Wiki, but it gives you a better idea than how I could explain it.

I've been playing around with my camera and came up with a few images. It's not too hard with Christmas lights strung all over the place, so I imagine it would be more challenging without them. If anything, it will give me something to work on. I'd like to give it a try with Rick's camera and lenses. So, as you can see, I've been playing around with some pictures. Nothing says Christmas than a Captain Jack Sparrow nutcracker, huh? Or how about Obi Wan with presents stuck on his light sabre? At least it's festive, and hey, I even managed to get some blurred effects in there, too.

Freebies are nice!

I got this in the mail yesterday. I used to eat LUNA bars a lot before I went low-carb. I still get their emails and newsletters. Every now and then they offer free samples if you're willing to take the time to fill out a simple form. I've gotten quite a few from them so far -- one even included a free tote bag. This time it was just for a Chocolate Peppermint Stick bar. I don't eat them anymore, but my girls might, so I went ahead and filled out the form. Imagine my surprise to get the lip balm in the same flavor -- now that I can use!

How about you -- do you get any interesting freebies?

Frustrating ...

For the past few hours, I've been wondering if I should even write this post. Sometimes it's better to just let things be, but sometimes it's hard. No one likes having salt rubbed into their wounds. But, having said that ...

I lost a friend on Facebook today over a sarcastic status I wrote. It was tongue-in-cheek and I didn't mean for it to be taken the wrong way. I simply said, "Is it bad that I snicker at the thought of the USPS having lay-offs?" The first person who responded laughed and said yes, so I quickly added more to explain that I have family who works for the postal service. In other words -- it was a JOKE -- not that I was wishing it on any person.

My snide remark was about the ladies who work for the post office where I live. Now, they've always been nice to me, so I've never had a problem. However, every single time my husband or daughters go in, those ladies are mean to them. If you knew my girls, you'd know how quiet and polite they are, so they don't do anything to instigate this. We have never figured out why they treat them so poorly. By that, I mean they are rude, short-tempered, condescending  and often try to belittle them for doing something wrong. It's gotten so bad that they despise having to mail a package. Rick would rather I cut off his arm than make him go in. It's not just my family either. I've witnessed them acting this way with other customers as well.

So, I made a sarcastic comment. Some laughed, some said they have the same experience, and others said their post office is great. One person, however, said I was being mean, especially in this economy. Just as I was getting ready to reply to her directly, I noticed she had unfriended me. Seriously? Over something like that? I guess I'm too sensitive, so I sent her an email apologizing that I offended her. She never replied back.

Mind you, she wasn't a close friend. Actually, I didn't know her all that well. However, she is a writer and like many others, I like supporting their writing efforts just as they support mine. Obviously, she was upset and wanted nothing more to do with me. Now, I've unfriended people too, and probably more just recently. When I do, it's usually because they're posting something very hateful -- like hatred over the police. I know not everyone likes the cops, but I come from a law enforcement family.

I consider myself pretty tolerant when it comes to most things. Many of my online friends use Facebook as a political soapbox, which is fine. Nine times out of ten I probably don't agree with what's posted, but again, that's fine. If something is especially offensive, I have the option of not reading it, or even hiding it if I want. But if something is truly upsetting me -- like a lot of these anti-police videos and stories going around -- I might go to the extreme of unfriending someone. But that's a big might. Friends can still disagree.

I know I'm way too sensitive. I deleted the thread because I didn't want to upset anyone else. I wasn't saying I wished the lay-offs would happen. It was just a snarky comment in light of the mean ladies my family has to deal with. I don't think it was worth losing a friend over, but she obviously felt so. If I unfriended everyone who posted something I didn't like -- I'd be in the negative! People post pictures of abused animals, domestic violence victims, profanity, crude humor, erotic materials. I try to let most of those slide, and if I don't like them, I hide them. When it comes to hate -- like a video pleading with wives and children of law enforcement officers to take their weapons away so they can't beat up on the OWS people -- that's not my cup of tea. I don't hate anyone, but maybe I'm just not as tolerate of people like that. Unless you're in law enforcement, it's really hard to understand.

You know, I don't know why I let this bother me. This particular person has posted a lot of anti-police articles and I didn't flip out over them. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I guess what it boils down to is that my friendship to her wasn't worth that one catty remark. And if you think about it, that's really kind of sad.

We have a winner!

Actually, we have TWO winners! I decided to choose two since I made everyone wait an extra day. I apologize for not announcing the winner yesterday like I said I would. I ended up spending most of the day out of the house and couldn't get to doing my blog. So, I decided to pick TWO names instead of just one. The boys drew names from a bowl and the winners are ...

C.R. Evers and Angie Townsend

Congratulations! Please email me a mailing address so I can get your books to you. Also, if you would like it signed, please let me know and to whom you want the book addressed to. Thanks so much to everyone who entered. I really enjoyed reading about your favorite books as a child.

My favorite childhood book was The Sheep of the Lal Bagh. It was written by David Mark in 1967. It was one of the first books I got from a summer book club my mom signed me up for one year. I loved it and years later, I wanted to find it again, but couldn't remember the name. I finally did and bought an old copy online. Ironically, a few months back I was at the Salvation Army and found another copy for a quarter. Can't beat that, huh? Anyway, thanks again to everyone who took the time to enter and congratulations to Christy and Angela.