Great Christmas Books to Share

I wanted to take a minute to share a few of our family's favorite Christmas books. Reading the kids Christmas stories is something I love and I know they love it too.
A book that has special memories for me is "The Shiniest Star". My grandmother read it to my mother when she was little, and then my mother read it to me and my siblings. That original book was pretty much worn out and fragile and I wouldn't have even wanted to ask to borrow it for fear of what my kids might to do it. So last year my Mom had the great idea to look it up online and see if "The Shiniest Star" was still available anywhere. (by the way, what did we do before the internet?) We were so excited to see there is now a reproduction of the original! So "The Shiniest Star" tradition is now being passed down to my own kids. :-) Here is a picture from inside the book.
Another favorite, and it too is one I loved as a child, (can you tell I'm big on nostalgia?), is a version of "The Night Before Christmas"
that is illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa. I like anything illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa, especially books she did through the 50's and 60's! I bought a reproduction of this at Barnes and Noble a few years ago and unfortunately the color isn't quite as saturated as the original, but it will have to do until I can buy an original 1961 version from ebay. My favorite picture in the book is of "the children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads" The picture looks like pure heaven. I couldn't find a picture to show you- sorry.

Well, my fingers are getting too cold to type since it is only 63 degrees in here. We didn't want to start a fire until morning since it's kind of a pain. Our goal is to try not to run our heater at all this winter to keep our bills from that evil Idaho Power from being so high ;-) We had a similar goal this summer and we only ran the AC a handful of times. In the meantime, I think I may be seeing my breath by morning!