Dakota Crandall Festivities

Andrew and I decided last year to start our own tradition of stocking/gift exchange on St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6th), instead of on Christmas Day. This year December 6th was much busier. It started with a men's prayers breakfast, church, then eating the special things I had made (including a homemade pumpkin pie inspired by Jan C.'s homemade pies), cleaning the house to get ready for a "small group" (about 21 people) that would start arriving at 3:30, followed by the rest of the progressive dinner stops at others houses. Then Andrew had to go to a funeral visitation prayer service from 7-8:20 pm or so. Finally we both got home and settled down to open our stockings and small gifts. It was a long day but it was fun. here are some of the photos of our house decorated for the festivities:

My homemade pie based on my grandmother's recipe. The pie crust was my mom's recipe.


These poinsettias were the .99 cent ones we got in Iowa. They are still alive! :)I worked on this sign for quite a few hours trying to reconstruct, touch up, make "stars" and paint our names on it. Our neighborhood is "Christmas Card Lane" so we inherited this sign and it was in pretty bad shape.