CHRISTMAS IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER

**We have some of our favorite Christmas songs to the right to help you get in the mood**

On Friday, we celebrated Christmas with friends and had a little cocktail party at our place. Our apartment hit a new record and can hold about 17 guests in our den area and that is pretty much max capacity. The highlight of the party was for sure the white elephant gift swap game. The Frenchies in attendance participated and I really think they enjoyed it, though normally the game takes a lot longer to play because everyone is stealing each other's gifts. I am not sure everyone grasped the rules. Jack was shocked. The French love to steal everything, including his bike (twice), but they were more interested in opening new gifts from under the tree on this night. We scored big time... ended up with a great Starbuck's coffee mug and a pizza cutter. I was happy. We will have to post pictures of the party later because we were to busy playing hostess to take any pics of our own. So, when we are able borrow (steal) pics from others, we will post them. In the meantime, here are a few holiday decor pics that I've captured around town.

Front entrance of Galeries Layfayette - one of the big department stores here.

Metro sign in front of Galleries Layfayette.

Our tree, which we bought the day after Thanksgiving. The French do not put their trees in tree stands with water. They use the cute little logs as stand, which I find really charming. The down side is that our tree is now dried out. Apparently, the French do not buy their trees until mid-December. In an attempt to keep our tree from drying out, we literally took the tree and put it in our shower for a 20 minute watering session. It didn't really work.

Jack putting the lights on the tree. It took all of 10 minutes to decorate.

The final product....our first Christmas tree!!!!