We hope to have a few of the closer family members stop by this afternoon and then we’ll host another get-together on New Year’s Day for the other family members who can’t make it here on Christmas Day.

Here’s hoping our holidays are warm and bright. Merry Christmas!

And when I first started wearing silver jewellry, I was dismayed by how quickly it tarnished until I learned this really cool trick for cleaning it from a forum that I found on the Internet:

You need a large glass jar with a lid, water, aluminum foil, and table salt.  Fill the jar about halfway with water (hot or cold, it doesn’t matter) and add about a tablespoon of salt.  Tear the aluminum foil into strips and put them in the jar. Add the silver jewellry and let it soak for a couple of minutes.  Take the jewellry out and wipe it with a soft cloth.  The tarnish will be gone!  Now I have to warn you that you should NOT use this on jewellry that has stones in it, only silver! I don’t know WHAT would happen to the stones, but I wouldn’t want to take any chances with them!

I tried this a couple of months ago on my own jewellry, and it worked like magic!  A couple of pieces were badly tarnished and I had to do it a couple of times, but it really really worked!

I love the Sterling Silver Jewellry for sale on the Keysilver Company’s website. All of their silver is of the finest grade and carries the .925 stamp.

When I go out on a social event, I love to wear a lot of Silver Bangles and Sterling Silver Bracelets.  I really like to layer them on!  For a casual social event, I tend to gravitate towards the bangles, for a more elegant formal event, I head for the bracelets.  The sparkle of sterling silver is so appealing to me!  I love fairies, and I found the most adorable fairy bracelet on their website that I want to buy!

The Keysilver’s website sells a wonderful selection of bangles, bracelets, pendants, and necklaces.  They offer free shipping all over the world.  I really like their 14 day money back guarantee too!

For example, my mother said that she wanted to go see the Rolling Stones in concert on the July 4, 1972 concert in Washington DC, but she lived over an hour away from arena.  She had to go to the arena a month before the concert (she got lost trying to get there and ended up getting lost in “the bad section of town” and was scared witless) to buy the tickets.  This was before the subway train (now in existence called Metro) had been built and she was forced to try to find it by driving.  So driving there and parking was a big issue.

It’s hard to imagine how hard it was back then to buy tickets to an event because now it is so easy to buy tickets over the phone and over the Internet.

One of the most convenient Internet sites to buy sports tickets is the Viagogo website.  My British uncle says that he used to have a hard time find a way to buy the tickets he really wants, such as ICC World Twenty20 Tickets, The Ashes Tickets, and the RBS Six Nations Tickets.  He says his best friend told him a few months ago about the Viagogo website, and now he uses it to buy all of the tickets he needs, for concerts as well as the Twenty20 Tickets, The Ashes Crickets Tickets, and 6 Nations Tickets.  He told me that he loves that site because he can also sell his tickets through them if for some reason he ends up not being able to go to the events.

Out of curiosity I went to the website to check it out, and was pleased to see that they also have a website that serves the United States of America, so the service is not just limited to the United Kingdom.  It’s always really good to find a company that other people recommend that you can use, too!

As much as the world “loves to hate” the USA right now, most of the educated people realize that learning to speak English is a good idea.  She is looking forward to practicing her own English skills with a new practice partner soon.

I went onto the webiste that she was telling me about and saw that it looked fresh and exciting.  It is easy to join and pick out whether you want to meet a dating prospect, or just a friend.  They had some really cool looking coffee mugs for sale with their logo on it, and also T-shirts.  I like the travel mug.

The camera retails for about $350 and comes in 6 different colors. It is a very cool camera with a lot of advanced features and might be something Santa should think about putting in my stocking this Christmas.

If the ski swap is well attended and well stocked, I’m going to keep my eyes open for a good deal on a snowboard. However, I found a nice web site called Christy Sports that has a great selection of snow skis and snowboards. Their prices are going to be hard to beat, so unless I come across a great deal this weekend, I’ll be back online next week to shop for Burton snowboards on the Christy Sports site. They have all the Burton gear we’ll need this winter, and with October 1 coming next week, our winter is fast approaching.

The Basin Sports website at basinshopping.com has the largest selection of Salomon skis on the East Coast.  I’m planning on picking out my skis for my gift from their website.

Christmas card

One of the most time intensive holiday traditions is the tradition of signing, addressing, and mailing out holiday greeting cards. That is something that our family gets started on very early in the season, because we send out hundreds of cards! Everyone in the family has to address at least fifty cards each.

We like to make sure that the cards are “ready and waiting” to be mailed out right after Thanksgiving – we get them all done BEFORE Thanksgiving, so we can just pop them into the mailbox immediately afterwards. We also like to type up a short little newsy letter to include in a few of the cards (not all of them, just a select few) to let those extra special folks know what has been happening in our lives.

We are planning on ordering our Holiday Cards over the Internet this year, having them customized with one of our family photos on it. We’ve found a website called cardsdirect.com that has a great selection of cards to choose from that we can customize in just about any way that we want them done. They have a flat $5.00 ground shipping charge on all orders. I’ve inserted a copy of our favorite card from their website for you to see.

The bestonlinecoupons.com website is a great place to go to find deals, discounts, promotion codes and coupons on a wide variety of products from a wide variety of online merchants, such as Best Buy and the Apple Store.  I like checking out their deals on computer parts and accessories so that I can keep on top of the new products and try to buy the best ones at the lowest prices.