How appropriate that “festive” was the theme for the month of school concerts; work parties; family parties; Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa; giving and receiving; and New Year’s Eve! For me, something festive is something that brings joy, invokes the holiday spirit or celebrates the season. Here are some particularly festive moments from our December.

1. Christmas Lego – I described in another December post that Christmas and winter-themed Lego sets make up a large part of our holiday decorating. This year, Santa was kind enough to include a couple of minifigs from the newest series in our stockings, including a Christmas elf, a Yeti and this gingerbread man. He’s got a sense of humour, too!

2. Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe Christmas Tour – It takes planning and organization to log on to Ticketmaster in the middle of the summer to ensure we get tickets for our favourite seats for this annual show. I wrote about the show early in December, so if you’d like to read more, click here.

3. Holiday Bouquet – Every year for as long as I can remember, my parents have given me a beautiful bouquet of cut flowers before Christmas. If I keep the water fresh and cull the faded blossoms, I usually am able to enjoy it until the boys start back to school the first Monday of the new year. Here’s one of my favourite flowers from this year’s arrangement (and if anyone knows what it’s called, please leave a comment and share your knowledge!)

4. Christmas Baking – One of the traditions in our family is for the boys and I to work together to do our Christmas baking. Over the years, the tradition has evolved from them standing on the seat of a chair set with its back to the counter and dumping the cups of flour into the mixing bowl, to decorating, to the point now where they help choose which recipes we’ll bake and then taking turns with the measuring, mixing, etc.

This year we baked two kinds of biscotti, shortbread, gingersnaps, chocolate chip cookies, meringues and Christmas “crack”. After almost two weeks, we still have quite a bit left, and C has challenged himself to earn “plating points” with each arrangement.

5. Ringing in the New Year – My plan to photograph at least one of Canmore’s two New Year’s Eve fireworks displays is part of the reason I’m later than most when it comes to posting my entry for this month’s challenge – I wanted to include a photograph from New Year’s Eve in the set. Now, we’re not all that into the drinking of champagne and counting down to midnight kind of celebration, but spending a couple of hours outside under the stars, listening to coyotes yip in the distance and watching for the early fireworks display seemed just about the perfect way to say farewell to 2013 and welcome to 2014. Here’s a photograph of the town of Canmore all lit up for New Year’s Eve. If you look carefully, you should be able to see a couple of points of light part way up Mount Lady MacDonald. I guess at least a few determined souls were determined to find the perfect location for viewing the fireworks displays!

Thank you to P.J. over at A ‘lil HooHaa for hosting this monthly photo blogging challenge. Click here to see P.J.’s photos of all things festive and for the list of other photo blogging posts for month ten of this challenge. Participation seems to be inching up each month. Maybe you’d like to join us in 2014? The theme for January is New.