Not your normal Christmas music

Here's the $10 Christmas tree. Not too bad, is it? I had visions of a scrawny, bare tree, but we were very pleased with this one. And at the first place we looked! The Christmas elves were looking after us, I think.

Misty is making a long drive over Christmas weekend (from Kansas to Florida!), and I made her a Christmas mix CD last night for the drive. While I was at it, I made some for the guys at work, too. I usually take some kind of food in, but we've had a LOT of food over the past few days (one of our clients came in yesterday with a HUGE basket of chocolate things: truffles, chocolate covered graham crackers, chocolate bridge mix, chocolate covered popcorn, etc.), so food didn't seem like a good choice. One year I made party mix and that was a big hit.

This was the song list:

• Oh Tannenbaum - Vince Guaraldi Trio
• Christmas Bells - John Gorka
• What Christmas Means to Me - Paul Young
• The Virgin Mary - Mason Williams
• Christmas Bayou - Michael Doucet
• We 3 Kings (of Orient Are) - Ottmar Liebert
• We Call it Christmas - Keb' Mo'
• That Old Christmas Moon - Leon Redbone
• Donde Esta Santa Claus? - Guster
• Winter Wonderland - Lenny B & Madison Park
• Fairytale of New York - The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl
• Driving Home for Christmas - Chris Rea
• The Christmas Song - The Ravonettes
• Good King Wenceslas - The Roches
• Christmas Time is Here - Gatsby's American Dream
• Christmas Time - Smashing Pumpkins
• Christmas - Blues Traveler
• Do They Know It's Christmas? - Barenaked Ladies
• Christmastime - Aimee Mann
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Steel Pan Christmas Band
• All I Want for Christmas is You - Mariah Carey

I told them: "This is my version of a Christmas CD -- don't expect the usual stuff." As we all know, I'm the queen of weird Christmas music.

So anyway, I rushed home last night, burned the CDs, then rushed back out to the post office to mail Misty's off, plus mail a few little packages that I was sending out to friends, just some of the stitch markers that I was making before we left on vacation. (As a reminder, if you want a chance to win a set, email me with the subject line "Crafty," and I'll put your name in a drawing at the end of the month.)

And speaking of stitch markers, I tried to take a picture of them, but this is all I could get without locking Dinah in the bathroom:

She's still a little clingy after vacation.