I have more great news...

2007-06-14T06:20:18Z

I have more great news!! I was recently chosen to be Link Master for My Merry Christmas... one of the largest and oldest Christmas sites on the web!! I was also promoted to moderator status at the Merry Forums... Here's the announcement:

What a great day -- two great announcements! Joining the admin team here at the forums and overall
at My Merry Christmas in the capcity of Linkmaster is Jinglebelle, my longtime friend and fellow
Christmas webmaster.

As Linkmaster Jinglebelle will work to provide relevant links to and from My Merry Christmas,
seen at this page. This is a critical function for any website and it is heavy lifting, let me
tell you! In this capacity Jinglebelle serves the Merry Forums as our resident guru on Christmas
"out there".

In this role she is way beyond qualified. Jinglebelle has been working as a Christmas webmaster
for more than a decade. She operates Jinglebell Junction, one of the oldest surviving original
Christmas sites online. Last year she launched ChristmasFlick.com, a merry site dedicated solely
to Christmas movies. And this year she has her hands full with Christmas Junkie, a new Christmas
topsite and is partnering with me to grow LinkChristmas, the World's Biggest Christmas Link
Directory. She is a kindred Christmas spirit with a delightful sense of humor and wonderful
online skills.

Please join me in welcoming her in her new role here!

Jeff Westover
Editor, My Merry Christmas

WOW! What a great review!

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The year was 1976...

2007-06-07T21:54:56Z

Wow... it's 90 outside and all I can think of is "I'd give anything for some snow". How I miss the coldness of winter, and the warmth of Christmas. Lately I've spent a lot of time remembering what Christmas was like a child. As other memories of my childhood fade those joyous Christmas times seem like yesterday. For some reason my memory is not that one of a normal individual, I remember actually sleeping in my crib, the blue vinyl car seat I would ride in and a few other scattered memories of when I was a very small child. The one memory that I treasure most, you ask?

First, let me point out that back then there wasn't all this worrying about being politically correct crap, and people went all out for Christmas. Everywhere you looked you could SEE Christmas. From the local grocery store to that house way out in the country, to the downtown businesses, even the city street lamps were decorated with tons of lights, in the shapes of little Christmas trees, and such. It was like a multi-colored sort of heaven for me. There was one thing in particular that was outstanding back then... the Biltmore Dairy bar's HUGE evergreen tree that stood at the edge of their parking lot. I can only imagine how they managed to decorate the enormous tree, but every year with out a doubt, it got covered with those huge multi-colored lights... and to top it off a giant lit yellow star.

The year was 1976, and I was only 3. Now of course I can't remember what month it was, but I do know it was either late November, or December. My aunt Alice had picked me up from my Granny's house and I was going to spend the weekend with her. On our way back to her house she decided to stop and give me an up-close look-see at my favorite tree. As a matter of fact she pulled into the parking spot right under it. I will never forget it. She got me out of that blue car seat and stood me on the hood of her '67 Ford Galaxie. It was dusk and snow flurries fell all around us. I stood in awe looking up this giant tree. It seemed to touch the sky, and I was tickled to be there. Now don't forget, I was only 3 (3 and a half to be exact) and curiosity set in. In the blink of an eye I grabbed the nearest bulb and it burned! I let go as quick as I grabbed it, and aunt Alice looked to make sure I was ok. Amazingly even after being burned I didn't want to leave.

Later in life when reminiscing with Alice about the incident, she pointed out that I didn't cry from the burn, instead, I cried when she got me off the hood and put me back in the car to leave. I don't recall that part... but I will NEVER forget how Christmas was burned into my memory!

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What's up?

2007-06-05T23:06:40Z

Well, there's been a lot of stuff going on for the last few days. I just have to tell you about the newest addition to my list of sites... Christmas Junkie TOP 50. You may have figured it out from the name, but I'll tell you about it anyway! It's a topsites... what is a top site you ask? Well... Christmas sites can sign up and add their banner to it, then they display a small button on their site that surfers can click to vote for them. The topsite ranks all the sites listed by the most popular ones first to less traveled sites being listed last. It's pretty COOL.

Christmas Junkie isn't the only great NEW Christmas site coming this year! Let me tell you about the newest site from the Merry Network... LinkChristmas.com. Now this isn't just another link site it's going to be the WORLDS Biggest Directory of Christmas Links! Not only are the editors of the Merry Network and yours truly editing the data base and adding links, we're inviting everyone to add their favorite Christmas links!! That means YOU! Come on over and add a link or two...

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Goodbye... Hello! Santa Junkies Anonymous

2007-05-20T13:53:07Z

SJAMEMBR07

Well, not only have I recently deleted JBJ's myspace page, today I deleted 'Santa Junkies Anonymous' the Yahoo group that I started WAY back in 2000. It only had a few real members, and tons of spam. I was tired of deleting it, so I just dumped the whole thing. It hadn't had a real post since 2004 (besides mine). So I say, goodbye to an old friend,

I did purchase santajunkiesanonymous.info, and will probablly start developing it into something, but I don't know what yet. Actually I have an idea of what it may be... It was only a buck for the domain, so it was kind of a compulsive buy. You know, one of those 'I didn't need it, just wanted it' kind of things. So I say "Hello!" to the site to come...

Anyway... if you wanna help me decide what to do with the domain, drop me a line... webmaster@jinglebelljunction.com .

Here's the first ever logo I created for SJA, I think I actually used paint to make it... it wasn't very pretty... but I feel I should give it a home somewhere.

SJALOGO

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Love made the front page of the paper!!

2007-05-19T05:14:12Z

Lovie_paper

Here's Love... this picture made the front page of the newspaper, this past Christmas! She is the tallest one wearing a Santa hat standing on the right, not looking at the camera...

She joined the choir at school and they got to go caroling about a week before Christmas. This picture was taken at the local bank just a block away from the newspaper's office. This small town is amazing. They have a Christmas parade every year, then a big festival downtown. It's great.

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Christmas past

2007-05-19T04:40:13Z

Pic00045

I found the cutest picture of Lovie today! It was taken sometime in Dec. 2001. She had a teeny Christmas tree in her room that year, and Santa even left her a couple of small gifts under it! How cute!!

BTW... I deleted my myspace page today... just wasn't for me.

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Holiday Tradition

2007-05-19T02:07:00Z

We can all remember as children laying in bed every Christmas eve waiting to hear those

sleigh bells coming, while we pretended to be sleeping. Pretend was the best we could do,

because the anticipation of Christmas morning wouldn't allow us to sleep for real.

I remember my Granny trying all kinds of trickery to coax me to sleep.

Like saying she had just saw on the news that santa had already been spotted in our town,

or the year she threatened to actually put me on the naughty list at the last moment.

Even the threat of coal for Christmas didn't seem to help me get to sleep any faster.

Of course, now I know why it was such a big deal, she wanted

to throw my gifts under the tree and get some sleep. She knew that I'd be up at the crack of dawn

wanting to rip through all the goodies that Santa had left for me. The rest of the day would be spent

assembling, insert batteries, and reading instruction manuals. All while taking pictures, cooking the Christmas

feast, and talking on the phone with relatives. I look back on it now and lovingly call it "Christmas Chaos".

Being a parent myself, and drawing on my childhood experience, I've devised a strategy for my own Christmas Chaos.

First of all, I would never threaten with the naughty list. I think that's a bit unfair just for

not being able to sleep due to all the excitement. Kids wait all year for Santa, it's their big day.

So here it is, the plan I've devised:

On Christmas Eve, right after dinner, I let my daughter open all her gifts from her dad, and myself.

That's it. Simple, huh?

So let me explain my logic... I found that letting her open the gifts from us, keeps her busy all evening.

She goes to bed tired, and not nearly half as wound up as I was as a kid. She gets a good night's sleep and

wakes up Christmas morning ready for round two.

Now, you may think that it takes away from Christmas morning... Not Hardly!

It by no means takes away from the spirt of Christmas either, if anything it makes it even more special for her.

Santa always brings her special gifts that we never thought of!

It works for us, and we've adapted it as our very own special holiday tradition.

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Decorating the Tree

2007-05-18T15:16:29Z

Well, I've been working on my websites ALOT lately. I've also been hanging out at the forums over at My Merry Christmas.com. There's alot of nice people there, and it's good to know I'm not the only one who wishes Christmas would hurry and get here again. Ah, but theres still 221 days left...

I was messing around at Jinglebell Junction today and decided to make a video of myself decorating the Christmas Tree. I'm going to post it here for your viewing pleasure although, It's grainy and not the best quality, and made me realize that I have WAY to much time on my hands. I should be seriously working on one of the 7 websites that I'm responsible for... but yeah, I'm a slacker! For real though, after I post it here, I'm really going to get back to work!! Anyway, you too can waste time decorating the tree by visiting Jinglebell Junction. Just scroll about half way down the page and right above the Talk Christmas banner you'll see a link for the tree. It opens in a pop-up window. The tree was my first ever attempt at using DHTML. I got the script from over at Dynamic Drive. You'll have fun decorating....

Decorate_0001

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Jinglebell Junction Update

2007-04-07T23:26:22Z

I wanted to give you guys the scoop on what's been going on over at Jinglebell Junction. As most of you know, Jinglebell Junction partnered up with the Merry Network last year to bring you a new Christmas forum... Talk Christmas . I hope you will all come by and visit, and talk about Christmas with us!

Becoming affiliated with the great folks at the Merry Network has truly been a great experience. It has allowed me to branch out and create another great Christmas website... ChristmasFlick.com. This site is dedicated to Christmas movies past and present! I hope ya'll come visit. I'm always looking for input and feedback, so please feel free to send me e-mail with your comments and suggestions.

Not only has our new partnership allowed for two great new Christmas sites, it has also driven tons of new visitors our way! Christmas 2005 Jinglebell Junction saw about 4,000 hits for the season. Now, compare that to the OVER 300,000 hits for Christmas season 2006! It has truly been a great year, and I plan on adding TONS of new stuff for Christmas 2007. Once again, I am open to any suggestions, and I can always use new ideas, recipes, crafts or anything Christmas related for the site.

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A little Jinglebell Junction history...

2007-04-02T22:24:51Z

Let me tell you how Jinglebell Junction came to be
THE Merriest Christmas site on the web...

In 1999 I originaly built Jinglebell Juction over at Homestead, for friends and family
to share in the holiday spirit. I thought an interactive christmas site where we could
share recipes, traditions and such, would be fun and maybe help bring family closer
dispite the miles. Well, I didn't get as much response as I thought.

Soon after, Homestead decided to start charging their current customers for their free
web-sites. So I moved the site over to Yahoo! GeoCities. Seeing that Geocities had such
a huge community, I decided to send out the link, I left it here and there, joined a few
Christmas Yahoo groups, and a few webrings.
Soon I realized that it didn't have to be my family enjoying the site, bringing cheer to
ANYBODY felt good! And it still does! Jinglebell Junction is really a labor of love...

Over the years Jinglebell Junction has really grown...and so have I. I've learned alot of
cool stuff on the internet, for instance, I tought myself HTML. Yep, I started out using
a drag and drop web page builder. I've since graduated to coding my own pages. What started
out as just a small project as became my favorite hobby.

Here's just a few of Jinglebell Junction's milestones...

* September 2005, Santa gave us an early Christmas gift! Our very own domain!

* August 2006, The folks over at the Merry Network donated server space to Jinglebell Junction!
This cut the cost of over all operating expenses dramatically, and I can't thank them enough!
In addition to the gift of server space, they've also given Jinglebell Junction access to
Talk Christmas to use as our very own forum!
Special Thanks to Jeff Westover, who made it all possible.

* September 2006, I announced the arrival of the newest member to our family of Christmas web-sites, ChristmasFlick.com! ChristmasFlick was born from the need of a comprehensive, all inclusive, listing of Christmas
movies and Christmas TV specials.

Jinglebell Junction has been honored with several awards from various sites this year!
And I thank all of the great sites who awarded them to us!
Jinglebell Junction has also awarded a few special sites with our very own awards,
you can see a list here.

Jinglebell Junction is not my job, it's my passion!
I'm purely in it for the joy it brings...
I'm trying to give what can't be bought, a little thing called Christmas spirit!

So why don't ya'll stop on in and visit Jinglebell Junction?

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