Geting Ready for the Holidays

Well this was certainly a weekend of hard work, surprises and delights.  It was Open House weekend at the store.  Our downtown merchants hosted "Christmas on Main St." and brought Santa to town this past Friday night.  I know, I know, you all want to know why we do that BEFORE Thanksgiving.  Well, in our small, rural little town, all of the shoppers head to the big cities to shop on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.  So we do it the week before Thanksgiving while all of our shoppers are still in town.  We had a great turnout on Friday night.  The streets we lit with luminaries and there was a delightful parade that brought Santa to town in a horse-drawn wagon. 
It's a lot of hard work getting the shop ready for Christmas.  The tree is hauled out of storage and strung with hundreds of lights and the Christmas decor is brought out and displayed and everything in the store has to be rearranged to do this.  Cleaned, rearranged, priced, stocked on shelves, etc., etc., etc.  I was really tired, but happy to have it all done.
Our Herb Society in Greenfield makes an herbal potpourri every year that is bagged and given away at the "Christmas at the Riley Home" each year in Greenfield.  We all cut and dry herbs and then we gather together and mix it all up into a beautiful potpourri.  We make 100 bags of our natural potpourri - and it is different every year.

Members of the Hancock Co. Herb Society gather to make herbal potpourri.

This year we again gathered at my shop in Rushville to strip the stems of herbs and flowers and combine it into our lovely herbal potpourri.

The Herbal Potpourri as it was being blended.  Lots of colors and fragrance!!

Some of the items in our potpourri include:  lemon verbena, lemon balm, mint, basil, hydrangea blooms, rose petals (and LOTS of them), oregano, sage, southerwood, thyme, and others too numerous to mention.  It turned out to be one of the prettiest potpourris we have made to date.
The weekend included many other events including my daughter having a stomach virus, (I hated that she was up and down all Friday night sick and on the couch all day Saturday being achy), making little gingerbread men for my gingerbread potpourri, baking pumpkins for Thanksgiving pumpkin pies, and a surprise delivery of some beautiful pink tulips from my niece Julie.  My birthday is today, and Julie and I share the same birthday.  It was so special for her to bring me flowers and visit for awhile.
All in all, it was a good weekend.  Life is good : )
More later