Holly Jolly Weekend!

Okay, so you know those scrooges who think that the Christmas holiday should stay in December and not spill into everything else? Well... I'm one of those scrooges. I just feel like Christmas is really special and it starts to lose some of that if it takes over two full months of the year. I mean come on people, there are only twelve months!

That being said, I very much enjoyed going to Lakeside's Holly Jolly event. Every year all of the businesses on Lakeside get together and have a big holiday bash. This year I think they had it a little earlier than usual, but I could be wrong.

They had trolleys running up and down to all of the shops so you could park anywhere and still get to everything. They even go up to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, though we didn't go that far this year. Lakeside has a lot of cool little antique and consignment shops, as well as a farmers/craft market and various food and beverage places. Everything is decorated and festive and every shop does something cool as part of the Holly Jolly. Some of them had hot chocolate or hot cider, some had cookies and other treats. Several places had fire pits and Feathernesters was using theirs for smores. One place had beer and brats. They also have live entertainment scattered along the event. The best part is it's all free! Sgt Peppers was even giving away free slices of pizza and Consignment Connection was giving away coupons for free hot dogs at one of the food trucks.

We had dinner with some of my family at Umami's. It's actually a little tea shop, but they do breakfast and special occasion dinners. They had a turkey dinner with turkey, stuffing, gravy, ham, corn pudding, potato salad, green beans, jalapeno cranberry sauce (yes you read that right), corn bread or a roll, and tea. It was delicious.

Alas, this was the only picture I took.



It's a big bear!


I'm pretty sure we will make this a tradition for as long as they do it.

Anyone else indulging in a little early holiday cheer?