44

Last Saturday was my birthday. Since I had to work on that day, we decided to go to Downtown Riverside to see the Festival of Lights the night before. We got there just as the sun about to set ... love how the colors came out in this photo. This is the Mission Inn all lit up.

I collect Nutcrackers... so love this too.... Another favorite.... almost life-sized mechanical figurines ...

As we walked around, we came across these two....

Great Dane! I'm so used to the size of my litte doxies that these two are like ponies to me. :-D

Then we found Cinderella's carriage....

... how could we not ride in Cinderella's carriage?.... It supposed to be 10 minutes ride turned into more than half an hour ride due to traffic. We enjoyed the extra long ride. :-)

After that, we found Santa (he's not real) sitting on this huge chair.... had to have the kids take a pic with him. Buddy wasn't with us that night because he's in a rock band and had a gig.
We did a lot of walking and window shoppings. The shop behind Santa's chair is an antique store... we spent a large amount of time in there. I found a couple of things that I liked but couldn't really asked for them since I've already received my presents earlier. One thing was a 24" white goose-feather Christmas tree (forgot to get pic), and this tiled birdhouse.
At $89 ... it's out of my budget. But I do love the whimsicality of it; this will be a future craft some day. I even have the birdhouse already.

As mentioned earlier, I had to work the next day on my b-day. John wanted to take me out to dinner afterward, but truthfully, after a BUSY day and even stayed longer than my scheduled time, I rather not go anywhere but just to be home and just eat leftovers. lol I was quite happy when I got home to discovered that he had ordered pizzas.... that definitely worked for me. Then, he and the kids had a banana split ice cream cake already for me too.... gotta love them all. :-) ... don't asked me why there are only 4 candles on the cake.. lol

I got to pick out my presents this year. I love it when that happened....
...found three layer cakes (10" charm pack) at my LQS. I already made something from one of them so that's why there are only two left... will share my project in future post.

I ordered a few things from Connecting Threads...
and the last gift from the family is a new LITTLE camera... so small that it will fit in my pocket.... these photos were taken by the LITTLE camera.

My friend, Pam, gave me this pampered set and matching pouches. It's so sweet of her to think of me.
Well, so far 44 is starting out pretty good. LOL I hope it stays that way.