Christmas Lights at Windcrest

Each year our family tries to find a night to drive around looking at Christmas light. My friend Kendra recommended driving over near San Antonio to see the lights at Windcrest. I am so glad we took her advice! We certainly saw some beautiful displays. Here are photos of a few of my favorites:


This house was awesome! The lights were set to music and the line of cars waiting to drive past this one was very long, but so worth the wait.


I loved the decorations outside this house and it appeared from what we could see of the windows the inside must have been spectacular as well!



I absolutely fell in love with the Santa on this porch!

Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

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Christmas on the Riverwalk

We always enjoy going to see various Christmas lights displays in our town and surrounding areas. It seems to have become a tradition to walk along the Riverwalk the weekend after Thanksgiving to see the lights there. These are some of my favorite photos taken this year as we strolled with family members who were in town from Wyoming.

Come, stroll along with me. Can you hear the carolers sing as they float by in one of the boats? Can you catch a bit of the excitement of Christmas as you see the amazing lights?

Oh Christmas Tree

For the past 2 years I have decorated 2 Christmas trees in our home. We have a tall artificial tree we place in front of the living room windows each year with all of our special ornaments on it and 2 years ago we purchased a tall skinny rustic looking tree to put in the dining room. This year after watching a Christmas movie together as a family, all 3 of us realized it had been 15 years since we put up a "real" tree and that we had never once all 3 gone out to choose and cut our tree together. So, we decided then and there to do that for this Christmas.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we all got up and headed off to Tannenbaum Farms to choose a tree for the house, and also a tree for the church to decorate to display downtown in Central Park.



Here Marty is cutting the tree for our house:




And this is the tree we selected for the church:





After getting them wrapped and secured atop the Suburban we headed home to await decorations.


This is the church's tree decorated in Central Park:




I decided the real tree needed natural looking and homemade ornaments. Great concept, right?! But in reality, it meant a lot of work. Heather and I spent an entire evening making these ornaments. I spent time over the next few days attaching ribons to hang these and attaching ribbons to pine cones for the tree:


Here is the tree in the living room:


And here it is lit up:



I decided I couldn't bear not to have the regular tree up with all our special ornaments so I put it in the corner of the retreat off the master bedroom:



And then we have the tree in the dining room containing all the gingerbread and apple ornaments, among all the Santa Clause figurines:




Stay tuned for further Christmas festivities we've been checking out!

Bracken Village Revisited

Last week my friend Nancy and I went to photograph the Christmas lights of Bracken Village. We decided to return for more photos last night, and this time Heather went with us. It was much warmer last night so I did not freeze! And, the gates didn't get closed on us so we did not have to hop any fences...I was so prepared to photograph that. Darn! It was a beautiful night and the light misty rains we've had off and on all week made for pretty reflections of the lights on the streets. The mist completely held off the whole time we were taking photos so we did not have to worry about our cameras getting wet. The 3 of us just wondered around the village taking photos of whatever struck our fancy. No adventures this time...unless you count the idiot who tried to run me off the road on the way........

By the end of the night all 3 of us had wet jeans from kneeling, or in Heather's case sitting, on the wet ground to get just the right shot!

Bracken Village

Tuesday night my friend Nancy and I decided we needed to go take pictures together of Christmas lights. I'd seen some photos she's been taking and posting at flickr and have been really impressed. I told her I needed some tips! She asked me where we should go and I knew just the place. Last night after work I picked her up and we headed to San Antonio to Bracken Village. All the shops were closed and there were no people, just lights EVERYWHERE. We took our time wondering around snapping photos and still didn't get everything we wanted. (I guess that means a 2nd trip is in order, right Nancy??) Thanks Nancy for your help and for the fun night out taking photos! And what photo trip with me is complete without some adventure thrown in??? Because everything was closing up, Nancy suggested I go move my car to the outside of the gates so we wouldn't get locked in. I did that and we were glad I did because the gates did get closed and locked on us. You guessed it, that meant we had to climb the fence to get ourselves out when we were finished! I should have photos of that but I don't. But, you just picture it and chuckle anyway!

Thanks Nancy, it was lots of fun!

Does this building remind anyone else of Little House on the Prairie???