I realize everyone is probably very busy with Christmas preparations. Or maybe you’re in that place where everything is done and you can relax for a couple of days. I am working again today – it was impossible to fit everyone in yesterday – so another day of coaching awaits. I forget how much energy it takes to communicate everything you want a person to learn in one hour. And zoom is not the best way in which to communicate. But, it is what it is. The actors are very nice and it’s a pleasure to work with them.
Ever since Monday, we’ve been watching a Christmas movie every night. I work around what we need to see on TCM’s schedule and fill in the rest from other streaming sources. So, Monday was White Christmas (Netflix). Tuesday – A Christmas Carol (the Alastair Sim version which is the only version for us – we watched it on YouTube.) Wednesday – Remember the Night (Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. TCM) Thursday – Meet Me in St. Louis which was on TCM.
Tonight will be The Bishop’s Wife (TCM), tomorrow, The Shop Around the Corner (TCM,) and on Christmas Eve, It’s a Wonderful Life (either Amazon Prime or Netflix.) We don’t really have any connection with contemporary Christmas-themed movies or animated movies. This “Christmas Movie Week” is one of our traditions and it’s a true highlight of the season for Don and me.
We’d already seen Christmas in Connecticut, A Holiday Affair, and a few others before the official “Week” began.
Another Santa by Vintage by Crystal.
And some very old celluloid reindeer I picked up in an antique shop many years ago.
It’s very cold right now – the temperature went down to 17 degrees overnight. I’m pretty sure the remaining potted plants on the porch have now died, so I’ll move those pots into the shed over the weekend. I have to say that the calibrachoa really hung in there until a day or so ago. Bravo!
Christmas is almost upon us!
Stay safe.
Happy Friday.
claudia, i hope your talents, professionalism, flexibility, patience and kindness shown at this job (which is not under the best terms and timing) will be recognized and rewarded and bring you more work in the future.
love the little decorations and that you and don watch a Christmas movie every night. i’ve seen most of the movies you mentioned (have not yet seen “Christmas in connecticut”) and like older movies best … though i liked “die hard” (terrible title, don’t like the violence, but bruce willis and the security guard [ralph johnson, i think] are perfect) and “Christmas with the kranks” (jamie lee curtis is great at such characters; also see her in “true lies”). “it’s a wonderful life” is and will forever be my favorite movie.
other than grocery shopping (for the fresh things) and wrapping a couple presents this afternoon, i am grateful to be in the “place where everything is done and you can relax for a couple days”. hope you, don and everyone else are, too.
a couple days early, but will say it now … merry Christmas to you all and your loves. may the weather cooperate, any travels be safe and everyone be well. may you find what you need in the stores and your shopping be done. may you spend these extra-special days and nights as you want and with your loves. may you all be able to say “it’s a wonderful life!” may you all know the Reason for the season. hugs and love to all.
kathy
came back to correct an error … it’s reginald veljohnson in the role of the security guard in “die hard”, not ralph johnson. sorry, to you and reginald veljohnson … i should have looked it up first.
xo,
kathy
We like Die Hard and watched it last Christmas – but after Christmas. It’s not an official Christmas movie for us.
Merry Christmas, Kathy!
my father and i saw the first four “die hard” movies in theaters. :) when it became available, my sister gave me the box set for Christmas (i still have a dvd player so i can watch at least the first/best one). :)
i remember years ago an online questionnaire asked for people’s favorite Christmas movies and someone wrote “die hard”. there was a long debate in the comments about whether or not that is a “Christmas movie”. it is to me, only because it is set at Christmastime and the “good guys” win. i then went down the proverbial rabbit hole about that and, for what it’s worth, found where one of his kids (as an adult) said bruce willis and their whole family consider “die hard” to be a Christmas movie.
kathy
xo
I’m so happy you had some work this month. It’s hard right now for everyone. No decorations at my house but I will spend Christmas Eve and Day with my Grands and that will make everything better. I’m trying to relax and get my stregnth back after Covid. The new year will bring a huge challenge of cleaning out my Mom’s duplex and me moving. I can’t think about that right now, but what a big job that will be. Merry Christmas to you and Don.
Why are you moving? Because you were sharing a duplex?
I hope you have a comforting and beautiful Christmas, Linda.
Merry Christmas!
I will be moving from the 2 bedroom to Mom’s 3 bedroom part of the duplex. It has more light and some handicapped changes we made to the bathroom. It was always the plan that I would move in after Mom passed. So lots of downsizing in both my place and Mom’s.
Ah, that makes sense.
xoxo
praying for you to have peace, ease, happy memories at Christmas and joyful things ahead in the new year and always.
if we lived closer, i’d be glad to help you pack and move.
hugs,
kathy
I didn’t realize Remember the Night was Christmas or I would have recorded! Rats! We watched White Christmas on Monday, Bishop’s Wife (I adore!), and Christmas in Connecticut. Hope to get in more over the next few days.
Merriest to you. I leave today for the kids so probably not online much. Have a lovely Christmas! (Jerry said hello!)
Yes, it is!
Merry Christmas, Jeanie!
Enjoy your movies, Claudia. My daughters and I used to watch movies during their winter school break, but now getting us all together is more difficult.
The heavy rains have stopped (we got 3″ of much needed rain where I live) but the fog is so thick. I couldn’t see more than one block ahead of me early
this morning.
I’m glad you got the rain, though!
Stay safe, Wendy.
I am sure you are enjoying your work with the actors. It is very unfortunate that money for the arts is dwindling, for you and for them. After 40 years, I would’ve thought things would’ve been better.
I have most everything done…except for baking cookies (just 3 different ones), and giving the house one last clean, which will happen as soon as I finish writing this. I have taken time to enjoy these last several days…watching all the Christmas movies. I guess having watched so many with our kids growing up, it’s family nostalgia to watch them again 20-30 years later…even the silly ones lol! But, It’s a Wonderful Life is always reserved for Christmas Eve. What I can’t believe is the notion that Die Hard is a Christmas movie….but all 3 of my sons insist. Must be a guy thing.
Hope your day of coaching is going well…enjoy! ;)
I agree – It’s a Wonderful Life for Christmas Eve!
Stay safe, Donnamae.
It’s nice you’re coaching, Claudia but not under ideal conditions unfortunately. We love all the Christmas movies you mentioned. We’ve watched “The House without a Christmas Tree”, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”, and “Prancer” but still want to watch “White Christmas”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “The Holiday” and “Lice Actually”. Better get my skates on, lol. The Alaister Sim “A Christmas Carol” is our favourite, too. Hugs, Elaine
Elaine – it’s just my sense of humour but I can’t help thinking that you must have the same auto correct as myself when it comes to your Christmas film list😀
Woops, should have been “Love Actually”, lol.
Thanks, Elaine,
Stay safe.
Claudia, I love your Christmas movie list! Those are always a Christmas treat for me! Sounds like you’re busy with your current coaching…may not be ideal, but like you said, it is what it is! Your celluloid reindeer are so cute…a fun, nostalgic display! Stay warm and enjoy your next movie!
Thanks so much, Barrie.
Stay safe.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Be safe, be well and enjoy those Xmas movies – many are the exact same I watch during this week too !!
Dawn Pinnataro Albany, GA
Thank you, Dawn!
Stay safe.
Love the vintage reindeer! What a great Christmas film list for you and Don although I have heard of The Bishop’s Wife, I don’t think that I have ever seen it.
Hope the coaching went well.
Happy Friday
Oh, you should watch it: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven. Perfection!
Stay safe.
Where I am in Southern Calif has gotten A LOT of rain! A deluge; but, for us, it soaked in or we drained well, so I’m grateful as are the plants and trees in our landscape. Is so great for parks, golf courses, cemeteries; school yards. Really greening us up. (Although we didn’t have a drought year.)
It IS a busy time of year, so it was nice of you to do a post and with photos; the Vintage by Crystal figures are so, so unique; just luv ’em.
Can I pick your brain to help me with my xtreme ignorance about some films: Are Bishop’s Wife, Shop Around the Corner and Meet Me in St Louis, movies which do have a Christmas segment somewhere in them? I’ve been looking for the holiday movies, too, for Sunday and Monday especially and, although I try and try again, I can’t seem to get ‘into’ most of the Hallmark flicks although I think it’s nice that they make such a ton of them (sometimes you stumble onto one that has someone ‘known’, like Beau Bridges, Marilu Henner, Shirley Jones, etc.).
On a concerning note, I hope we can stay safe. My husband was a week ago in the multiple airports and planes with crowds; then shut up in a car with no ventilation when a kindly person helped us with a car problem last Saturday nite, getting over, according to her, a pretty-bad case of Covid that took her and her wife away from their outside jobs for two weeks after Thanksgiving; next, my husband recently went into the post office at a busy-busy time of day (it’s a small building; tiny lobby; old air filtration; yikes) without a mask; today he was in the grocery store in the afternoon and people coming out and going into their cars were shaking their heads about what a ‘madhouse’ it was in the grocery store, completely packed with shoppers (of course too few wearing masks [we couldn’t help it; we had to go today; finally had the ‘funds’; but we could’ve tried harder to go in the morning!]); finally, my cousin who lives ten miles from me called me late last night to say that she and her husband (in their 50s) and their college-age daughter all have terrible head colds; but, then, on top of it they’ve all been exposed directly to Covid because their other adult daughter (who they all see every day; my cousin babysits; they all live within a block of each other) got Covid from her husband who contracted it at his workplace … and the truly awful thing is that their one-year-old baby now has Covid, too; so, I’m going to be on pins and needles checking in with them (nobody hospitalized yet; fingers crossed they can recover well at home; I’m very worried about the vulnerability of the baby); and of course they’re not going anywhere now for Christmas as they have to mend and isolate.
My goodness, are we to never be rid of this dastardly virus in all its menacing forms; is such a shame it has to be in our midst and messing up people’s holiday plans. My cousin had planned to spend Christmas with the (90-something-age) mother-in-law but they’ve all got to, now, especially protect her from cold and Covid. My recently-widowed (Thanksgiving) brother-in-law was supposed to fly to Maryland but decided he’s not up to it (he’s closer to age 80 than 70 now). So he will be alone at Xmas as I fear my cousin’s mother-in-law now will be as well. Sigh.
I just want all of us, everybody, you and your readers, to stay safe and well during this winter and holiday season; is my prayer!
(In the meantime, I’m trying not to catastrophize and we are leaving in 15 minutes to go see Santa take off in his sleigh from our community center as he makes a tour of our town!)
Prayers for all.
xoxo
praying for you, vicki, as well as your husband, everyone, for peace, safety, wellness, being with loved ones/getting through lonely times, having enough …
not that they’re welcome at other times either, but this is an especially tough time of year to have worries, isn’t it? hope you enjoy your town’s ceremony, some movies and treats and lots of peace.
merry Christmas. here’s to a better new year, too.
hugs,
kathy
They wouldn’t be Christmas movies if a good chunk of them wasn’t about Christmas! They all have a significant portion devoted to Christmas and The Bishop’s Wife is all Christmas. Bishop’s Wife: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven. Shop Around the Corner: Margaret Sullavan, Jimmy Stewart, and Frank Morgan. Meet Me in St. Louis: Judy Garland, Mary Astor and a host of wonderful actors.
I am not a fan of Hallmark Christmas movies. They’re the equivalent of Harlequin Romances for the holidays. But that’s just me.
Stay safe, Vicki.
What a lovely tradition, a Christmas movie a night. I do like the George C. Scott’ “A Christmas Carol” It has a wonderful music score. I wish you and Don Happy Holidays.
Take Care,
Kaye
I like it, too. But Don and I find the Alastair Sim version our favorite. He is superb!
Stay safe, Kaye.
All my very favorite movies!! I watch them every year also. Wishing you and Don a very Happy Christmas and best wishes for a Merry New Year! Lori
Thank you, Lori.
Merry Christmas!
I enjoy reading about your and Don’s Christmas movie traditions. Sounds so sweet!
I’m ready for the celebrations to begin and will enjoy them but also be glad when it is over and quiet again!
Merry Christmas to you and Don!