Tis the Season for Cheer!

If you do not enjoy the holidays, you need not enter this post!

I, however, looooove the holidays! And it's December 2nd now, which means we can be as fully festive as we want!

The time is going to rush on by anyway, might as well enjoy what we can!

So in order to brighten your holidays a little bit, I thought I'd share a few holiday recommendations.

Gifts

First of all, if you missed it, I hosted a small but very helpful Gift Giving Idea Exchange Meme and Jason wrote the greatest post on gift giving ever. I still need to go back and leave a real comment, but I don't think anyway has ever fully broken down the psychology of meaningful gifts the way Jason does in this post. Also, I just love that there's another person out there that thinks about this stuff the way I do.

You should check out all the posts, though, because there are a lot of really great ideas if you're on a budget but still want your gift to matter!

I will also offer a few book recommendations tomorrow for gifts and I hope you'll check it out! I just can't help myself. This is still at heart very much a book blog.

Movies

Okay please don't think less of me but I enjoy a good many cheesy Lifetime/Hallmark Christmas movies. Not all of them and I usually dislike any that use some cheesy Santa story line. I guess it's mostly the romances I like! Anyway, if you also enjoy these, I recommend The 12 Dates of Christmas (which was actually on ABC Family oh well) which is on Netflix for those of you who have it. It's a Groundhog's Day type of Christmas storyline with Amy Smart and it's very cute! I watched it a couple of weekends ago when I was sick. I am also totally going to watch the Mistle Tones just watch me!

If you're looking for other Christmas movies, I still recommend the book, Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas as a resource.

This month's film club movie was supposed to be It Happened on Fifth Avenue, which I have never seen. I've decided to go ahead and watch it and post about it on December 20th as planned only I'll be posting about it here instead of at Carrie's blog. So I hope some of you will also watch it and share your thoughts about the movie! (I have some other thoughts about film club I'll share next week to see what you think!)

And I'm looking forward to my annual watch of It's a Wonderful Life, one of the best movies ever made ♥♥♥

Books

I have no recommendations for this section. Rather, I thought I'd show you my shelf of potential holiday reads. And this is not all of them, woe is me.

Yes all of my shelves are double layered like that. I know it's hard to tell what the books are in this picture, but basically they are a bunch of Christmas romances, okay? (also I know there are a few non-holiday reads there my categorization of my books is incomplete)

Do you guys read holiday books? If so which ones are your favorites?

Music

The best part! If you are unaware, Amazon gives away 25 free Christmas songs every December. So there's no excuse not to get some variety in your holiday playlist!

In addition, you can currently get Over the Rhine's Snow Angels for free at Noise Trade. "All I Get for Christmas is Blue" is like one of my faaaave Christmas songs. In fact, here it is just to entice you...


Justin McRoberts also has his Christmas songs up on NoiseTrade for suggested donation right now.

Has anyone discovered any great new Christmas albums this year?

Blogs

Finally, it's the end of the year which means there's plenty going on around the blogosphere to celebrate!

The Virtual Advent Tour remains one of my favorites and it's in full swing now. Be sure to check out the posts and enjoy learning about how others feel about the holidays!

Smugglivus kicked off at The Book Smugglers and two of my faves posted, Courtney Summers and Angie. I reallllly love these year end posts so much! I'm looking forward to all of yours and also The Millions Year in Reading!

Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful season of cheer! Feel free to share your favorite books for the holidays, movies, music, etc. and also any deals or giveaways I might enjoy this time of year! :)