Happy St. Nicholas Day and day 6 of the Virtual Advent Tour. Hard to believe — and slightly terrifying — we’re already a quarter of the way through, right?

Behind today’s door is raidergirl3 from an adventure in reading. Raidergirl3, who lives on Prince Edward Island in Canada, is the Virtual Advent Tour’s longest-running participant, I’m pretty sure.

She shares a song performed by two local women.

Thanks for stopping by and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for our next door to open!

I love it when new folks join in on the Virtual Advent Tour.

Behind today’s door is a post from kathy b at Compassionknit. She offers up some ideas for holiday-themed knitting.

Make sure you stop back tomorrow, St. Nicholas Day, for another post on the Virtual Advent Tour!

Happy first Monday in December!

I’m back as today’s host for the Virtual Advent Tour. Now that my tree-trimming party is out of the way, the next things on my holiday prep agenda are sending out Christmas cards and working on the Christmas cd/mix I make every year. To help set the tone for the week, I thought today I’d share with you some of the Christmas songs that made last year’s playlist:

I am of an age and familial temperament that the Muppets are a crucial part of any Christmas celebration.

I like to include musical acts that are personally relevant to me in any given year, and last year that included Sharon Jones, who died. Rudi and I were lucky enough to attend her Christmas concert when it came to D.C. in 2015 and it remains one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Period. She had so much life and joy in her and she said that she’d rather go down singing than not.

Every year I have a slush playlist where songs that don’t make the cut for any given year but that I want to keep considering end up. Antje Duvekot’s song had been bumped from year after year, partly because I wasn’t sure that lyrics that included the word “thong” were family-friendly enough. But after last year’s political battle, any feminist anthem Christmas song, which this certainly is, was going to seem more than appropriate enough.

I thought this big band version of a classic Christmas song was funny.

This was the very last track I fit into the mix in 2016, having only heard it on the All Things Considered annual Christmas special on our drive north.

I hope you enjoyed this music on Monday stop on the Virtual Advent Tour and that you’ll come back tomorrow to see who’s got a holiday post to share.

Today is Advent Sunday, the fourth Sunday before Christmas and officially the first day of the Advent season according to the Western Christian church.

To celebrate the day, Jo Kay of Beyond Strange New Words offers some of her favorite winter reads.

Jo Kay has been participating in the Virtual Advent Tour since 2011, so it’s great to have her back again this year!

Thanks for stopping by. We hope to see you again tomorrow for another Virtual Advent Tour post! (If you think this seems like a fun thing to do, there’s still time to join in on the merriment. Just leave me a note in the comments.)

Welcome back!

Behind today’s door we have a post from Nancy at Wyoming Breezes, who shares a family recipe for a holiday favorite!

This is Nancy’s first time doing the Virtual Advent Tour, so I’m particularly excited she’s able to join us in the fun!

Here are a few other Advent-themed events from around the internet:

• Drops is doing their knitting Advent calendar again this year. Get a new free holiday pattern every day!
• Riveted has expanded their free online reads program to a full 25 days. Each book will be available for members of their site (which is free to join) for 24 hours for you to read. (Tomorrow’s book is Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down, a taut verse novel, which you could likely read in less than a couple hours.)
• Read Christmas-themed books as part of the Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge is going on through Epiphany.
• Several knitalongs are running throughout the holiday season with short pattern instructions given each day. I’ve seen several of you are doing Project Peace. Here are a few other free ones: There’s also Tricia Weatherston’s annual Christmas Advent scarf, a miniature doll and accessories, and House Elf Scrap Socks, Lace Winterberry scarf. Ravelry also lists several other paid Advent knitalongs.

That’s it for right now! I’ll see you back here tomorrow for another exciting Advent reveal!

Happy December 1, and welcome to the first day of the 2017 Virtual Advent Tour!

Today’s host is me!

Part of my holiday tradition these days involves going out on Small Business Saturday (the Saturday after Thanksgiving) to support local businesses wherever I am.

This year, my best friend, Karen, and I were in Putnam, Connecticut, that afternoon, where we discovered the town’s businesses had put together gingerbread houses/structures/engineering marvels. They all smelled wonderfully of ginger and clove and sugar and looked delicious, and some of them were remarkably creative:

(Created by a realtor)

(I really liked the Oreo grand piano in this one.)

(Someone clearly put a lot of work into this one.)

(This one was at the local bike shop.)

(My photography skills left something to be desired here.)

(This one is my favorite, but again, my camera and I weren’t up to combating the glare. Located in the window of the local comic book and record shop, this Transformer is at least two feet fall. Seriously impressive engineering here, even if there had been a mishap at some point.)

That’s it for today. Below you can find the schedule for the rest of the month as I have it thus far. (I have a couple emails out to a few other people right now.) If you’d like to join us by posting a holiday-themed blog post, we’d be delighted to have you. Just leave a comment to let me know you’d like to participate! Also, if you are participating, feel free to grab the badge at the top of this post. (It’s 400 px wide. I also uploaded a 200px one. Let me know if you want something in a different size.)

And be sure to stop back tomorrow for a new and wonderful Advent door to open!