Bag Lady: Naughty or Nice?

This little "crabby" lady has lived in our St. Augustine guest room since I received her as a gift some fifteen years ago.

When I saw the following Christmas bag, I knew that it was the perfect compliment for her.

Note that the bag contains the choice, "Naughty or Nice", and judging from my little friend's expression, I believe I checked off the appropriate adjective. What do you think?

In addition to our bag lady, this little goat cart has lived with us for years and traditionally finds itself filled with gifts during the Christmas season...

Knowing full well that Santa has trouble on our steep, tin roof, I wasn't one bit surprised when a red "sleigh" appeared in front of our house with an elf in a red jacket. He left a bag of Rock Salt in the goat cart in preparation for Santa's annual visit!

In addition to the bag of rock salt, the elf, knowing that I am a bit of a bag lady myself, left some other bags on this little wooden dolley/wheel barrow in front of the tree...

Since The Munchkins and Company were coming for Christmas, the elves left a toy bag for good boys and girls...

Along with this Coal Company bag for the "naughty" ones on the list...

There was also a bag of feed for Santa's reindeer since Florida is an espeically looooong, highly populated state, and the reindeer get hungry pulling that jolly fat man, his sleigh, and all his loot! ;-)

Here is a close up shot of the rock salt bag whose print didn't like being outside, even on a covered porch! That fact aside, the good thing about these bags is that they are recyclable. They make cute gift wraps or decorations, and similar ones can be found on etsy. These were a real hit with our crowd of old and young alike and had a good price point for the punch of personality they added!

And speaking of our crowd, we had a nice dinner the day after Christmas last year at The Columbia. This is the patio which is a fun place to dine, summer or winter. I can't find the pictures we took, so I borrowed this one from the restaurant's website...

Later that night, we went on a carriage ride...



This was the horse that was kind enough to pull our carriage...

And you can tell from this blurry shot that someone was VERY excited!

Here we go!

Hang on tight, everyone...

As we enjoy the Nights of Lights!



Pretty, isn't it?



The whole downtown is covered in what appear to be millions of white fairy lights...



And St. Augustine's lights have been voted one of the best light displays in the WORLD!



Go us!



For a small town, that's HUGE. :-)

We actually paid the carriage driver to drop us off at our door (we are on the carriage route).

We then went inside and opened stockings that always include English Christmas Crackers that always include paper crowns.

We were so tired we decided that while we would open stockings that night, the mountain of gifts needed to wait till the next day to be opened!

While these little takeout boxes aren't exactly bags, they made an excellent presentation for fragile items. I included "chopsticks" in the form of Christmas pencils and varied the bows to distinguish to whom the presents belonged. I found these takeout boxes in the Christmas foodie aisle at Hobby Lobby last year. I can't remember where I found the Santa box, but he was especially sturdy for fragile items...

Among the Christmas gifts was this German nutcracker dressed in Gator colors for Bill, Adelaide's husband and the grandfather to our godchildren. The little Mini-Me even had a grey beard and grey hair to match Bill's! Can you tell that he loved it???

Among Addie's presents was... you guessed it... a Lily Pulitzer flamingo BAG that says, "Birds of a feather shop together!" She got a kick out of it, but I think she got a bigger kick out of her grandfather playing with his nutcracker. I love it when grownups act like kids at Christmas!

Mr. Magpie who is an art lover got this oil painting for his office...

While I got this British shopping bag...

Filled with this cute pillow AND the Downton Abbey series. Yes, I was apparently very, VERY nice! ;-)

Not to be outdone, Mr. Magpie received this bit of Americana...

An Uncle Sam bank with a money bag all his own into which pennies disappear as if by magic!

Funny thing is, the pennies are nearly impossible to retrieve...

While Uncle Sam appears to be laughing, and laughing rather diabolically at that!

Art imitating life, perchance??? ;-)

On that note, I will end by saying that I will be sharing Christmas posts each week including "Sock It To Me" and "Christmas Cuteness". It has been a long time since we have spent Christmas in St. Augustine, and we really enjoyed it last year. So I will be sharing more of that celebration with you. The fun thing about this house is that it's old and quirky, near the sea, and amenable to using nautical decorations and whimsy, both. In a sometimes colorless and cheerless world, this old house is anything but!

Thank you so much for visiting me today, and I look forward to visiting you in return. I'm sorry that my visiting was sporadic at best the last week or so, but I was out of town and had trouble getting online and staying online to visit. Then when I returned, I wasn't feeling well. That's over, and now, I'm back in business and will be joining my friend Sally for Blue Monday. Hope you'll join us there as well by clicking HERE.



Quintessentially,

Mrs. Magpie (Sheila)

PS... It appears I accidentally republished my last post when I went into it to copy the Blue Monday Logo. Sorry about that! I don't know how that happened, but I want to apologize if you get two posts from me tonight! xoxoxo