I love the musical "Scrooge" with Albert Finney in the lead role, based on Charles Dickens's, A Christmas Carol.  Stories told with music and lyrics can bring to mind many lines that I most likely would otherwise forget.  After an especially long night, with visits from his old partner Marley and Christmases Past, Present and Future, Scrooge awakes to find himself alive and with a new outlook on life -"I've got a chance to change and I will not be the man I was!"  Nothing helps repentance like a near death experience!  Faced with a wasted life and a future of endless COLD and misery, Scrooge does not accept his doom, but rather takes this second chance to make the changes in his life that will bring him to a much more pleasant existence.  A little excerpt from the visit by Jacob Marley: "Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!” “But you were

 I was talking to my girls a few days ago and every yummy idea I was coming up with involved one common ingredient…Peppermint!  Did I have any in the house?  Nope!  So this morning I stopped at the grocery store during EMS (Early Morning Seminary) and bought 3 big boxes of peppermint candy canes.  I didn't even mind when I started taking the wrappers off and found that most of them were broken…this time I wasn't even slightly disappointed because the next thing I did was to put them into a heavy freezer Ziploc and smash them into tiny pieces…not a total winning method as the canes are a little sharp and poke holes into the ziploc. But it did the job.  A couple of days ago I posted the Double Chocolate Cocoa Cones…here's an idea I adapted by putting the crushed peppermint on top of the marshmallows, and deleting the chocolate chips from the mix.  They are so pretty!  However, I have a big DISCLAIMER:  As I was handling the cute little packages this morning, I noticed that the crushed peppermint was pretty hard and seemed to have melded together.  I am going to go down right now to boil some water and make sure it will make a good cup of Peppermint Cocoa…otherwise, I just made a whole bunch of pretty for nothing!  My day ended on a better note.  My assignment (for myself) was

It is cold, no freezing outside!  When you live in San Diego, that's a true sign that winter is here.  By mid-day, it will be delightfully warm outside in the sunshine, but in my house, it definitely feels like winter.  That…and the fact that it's DECEMBER 1st and I haven't started decorating for Christmas yet can cause a good deal of panic at my house!  When I presented the idea of getting down the Christmas boxes from the attic shelf in the garage last night, my dear husband suggested that getting the laundry done first might be wise – I don't know…maybe because he needs to put the ladder somewhere!  So this morning, laundry is going full blast, next comes the dusting and cleaning, so that when he gets home this afternoon, there will be no excuses!  It is so much work to set it up that we like to have it around for at least the whole month of December, and frequently keep it around until the first full week of January is over. Along with the cold weather and decorating, the Christmas season brings lots of handmade crafts, goodies and gifts.  I am attempting to actually handcraft a pile of gifts  this year and there are always things that get in the way.  But if I do one or two things a day, I can accumulate quite a stash.  Here are a couple of cards