The night before the night before Christmas

So only two more nights til Christmas morning! I can hardly believe it's almost here. We wait all year for this special day and then it comes and goes so quickly!

Jonah and I went out to the bookstore tonight for our annual tradition (now it is anyways) of choosing a beautifully illustrated Christmas children's book. Last year, we bought The Gift of the Magi (illust. by PJ Lynch) and The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey (illust. by PJ Lynch as well) This year we picked up Winters Gift (illust. by Jane Donovan)which we have both read before and really enjoyed, and the illustrations are beautiful. Jonah pointed out that they are painted on canvas, as the texture gives it away.

Since we are both artists it's hard to buy a book that is not beautifully illustrated, since we love reading and enjoy some writing, it's hard not to buy a book without a thoughtful story, and since we are both designers, the typography has to be set nice, not huge oversized fonts in gaudy type, and because we are both Christians, the story has to be clean and appropriate and not Santa oriented.

So I guess we are particular....

But we will both enjoy these books for years to come and every year it's a special tradition to purchase another beautiful copy of a story that we will treasure. Someday we can read these together with our own kids, who hopefully will thoroughly enjoy the beautifully illustrated, well written books :) I can certainly see us pointing out why the pictures are so well drawn and painted! But we shall see...