Christmas is round the corner + freebie

Xmas is near, only 10 days away. 

We have another feast day here in Italy on the13th of December, Santa Lucia Day. Another day  in which children receive gifts and sweets, nuts and fruits. 

I've found a good summary of her story on wikipedia: 

Saint Lucy is one of seven women, aside from the Blessed Virgin Mary, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. Hagiography tells us that Lucy was a Christian during the Diocletian persecution. She consecrated her virginity to God, refused to marry a pagan, and had her dowry distributed to the poor. Her would-be husband denounced her as a Christian to the governor of Syracuse, Sicily. Miraculously unable to move her or burn her, the guards took out her eyes with a fork. In another version, Lucy's would-be husband admired her eyes, so she tore them out and gave them to him, saying, "Now let me live to God".

A. woke up yesterday ten minutes earlier to check if S. Lucia visited us or not, and noticed she drank the water we left for her and that her donkey ate the salt we left form him. He received also a gift, a package construction bricks to build a space ship. Lucia knew for sure is a big fan of star wars ..... :) Sadly it was not a Lego , we had fun building it even if at the end I had to glue all the bricks together as they did not stuck to each other. If I may give you a suggestion, do not buy cubix or ligau blocks,  you are gonna give out the saved price difference in glue, believe me!!!!

Here's a layout of a past Christmas I particularly love. The last feast of the winter holidays in Italy is the befana, the last chance for children to get a small gift. The Befana is an Italian traditional festivity of the 6th of january, the Epiphany. The Befana is a old ugly woman, some sort of witch, who rides a broomstick and brings presents to the good children usually nuts, mandarin orange, bon bon, and sweet carbon and onion to the bad ones.The historical reason is that, probably, this strange character
bringing candies to good children and charcoal (or garlic) to bad ones existed even in the pre-christian tradition.So, as it often happens for other Christian festivities, it is just a way to fit an old traditional festivity with a Christian one.

Sadly I lost the credits info of the items I used so if you recognize some elements please leave me comments so that I can credit properly.

Journaling:

The old year is over, holidays are over, the Befana arrived bringing us a hag full of sweets. We had a time of sweet emotions, the arrival of Santa Lucia with the "PUZZI"(puzzle) of Winnie Pooh, It's was such a breathtaking emotion for Alexander hearing Santa Lucia seated on her donkey calling his name among all the other children ... then getting ready for Christmas, decorating the Tree, painting a nativity scene on the living room windows. This year Alexandr learned that Santa Claus brings presents only to good girls and boys and he must have been one of them, for sure, as he got lots
of presents... This has been a marvellous holiday time for the three of us, full of warming joy, cheers, laughter and kisses, and this is all because we love each other soo much!

Now on to the freebie. I created some Xmas paper to share with you in the next days, here's the first one.

 

The link expired!