Well, it’s here, our favorite month, at least for me that is. Maybe my husband and children like another month better, but I love December and April the most. They have always been my favorite months. I would have my greatest gifts of all that were given to me…my children. My daughter was born in December and my son was born in April.

I’m still going back and forth with whether or not I will be doing Blogmas this year. I think what I will try to do is share a little bit of our Christmas traditions we are doing this year. This first post is about our traditional shopping day on historic main street. I love walking down there and checking out what the store displays look like. The house we are fixing up is around that area, so it’s nice going for walks in different locations, to switch things up.

They started decorating for Christmas on main street, but as of the time I’m writing this there are no Christmas lights on yet. They are waiting until the parade. Then the whole area is lit up with hundreds of tiny lights. My husband and I usually do our walking in the evenings after the lights come on. They have a horse carriage that goes around the shops too.

I have a favorite shop and so far that’s the shop I always end finding my yearly ornament from.

I visited a new shop this year, they weren’t around last year. The area is growing so much that new businesses are moving in all the time. In the shop there were homemade breads and essential oils. They had tea sets and all kinds of hand made items from local businesses around town.

They also just opened a new Irish pub. Families eat there as well. It’s not all about drinking. They have games to play and records, and a giant bean bag to just hang out on. We ordered meat balls and a snack tray, and my husband had some Irish coffee.

The last store we stopped off at was beautifully decorated. They had a bird seed feeder in the shape of a cat’s head.

I stopped off later to get some giant chocolate chip cookies at our favorite bakery. And my daughter picked up one of her favorite books, The Help. At our bakery they have used books for sale. Paperbacks are $5 and hard backs are $7

Then I walked down to my favorite antique shop. The owners grandson was working and he shared funny family stories with us. He started sharing stories about his grandma’s Happy meal collection of toys down in her basement and how they don’t make good toys like they used to. Now the toys fall apart. Sounds like what I always complain about. He showed us a rosary from the 1800’s, the cross had a secret…a tiny knife was hidden in it. I have never seen anything like that. He told us it belonged to a nun, that’s what their crosses were like.

I walked down to another shop and checked out what gnomes they had available this year and found a small one to add to my collection. They had the best decorated tree of all the trees in that shop. I thought it was so beautiful. It was in Peppermint colors with sprinkles of gold.

We continued on walking and exploring. The sun was setting and it was starting to get dark which means the shops would be closing soon. It was a really fun day and I love our new tradition of picking one day to shop together as a family every Christmas.

Happy shopping adventures everyone. Stay safe out there and God bless you all.

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