It’s balmy after a wee dip into freezing.  Lovely English language Christmas Mass for us on Christmas Eve.  It’s the first time we haven’t traveled over this holiday since before my son was born, so more than 15 years.  We baked cut out cookies and fat stuffed cookies, watched every holiday movie we own, simmered cloves and cinnamon and played Christmas carols.

Made this enormous dreamcatcher out of a dry cleaning coathanger and my beads.

I have so many beads. When we lived in China the last time, in Guangzhou, we used to go to the bead market.  It is an absolutely gigantic place, literally kilometer after kilometer.  It’s in a huge, huge indoor space, but the 1000’s of stalls are accessed continuously by little electric carts.  Pretty much every bead that is produced for any form of object is available there.  If you’re just a spectator, not a buyer, and if you bring a bag with you, you can pick up kilos (pounds) of beads off of the floor as they are literally everywhere.  It’s LOTS of fun.  We did the same thing at the rhinestone and button markets, and boy oh boy the fabric markets!