It seems fitting to post my 12 days of Shiny Christmas today. These are things I received throughout the year, in proper numerical order to boot!!

• 1 Celtic Handfasting

April 12, 2008 I married my super model man. We did a Pagan Celtic Handfasting and it was quite remarkable. Even my very Catholic family members found it beautiful. Calling it Celtic helped I suppose, but the Celts were Pagans too. If you’re a masochist and want to weep, check out our ceremony.

• 2 Pixar Robots

2008 brought the best Pixar movie… ever. I do believe Wall-E was the best movie I saw throughout 2008. There are few words to describe its sheer awesomeness. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Though seeing cute (and amazingly high resolution) robots on the big screen was far more indulging than seeing it on our TV screen at home.

• 3 Handknit (pairs of) Socks

I learned to knit socks this year, and churned out three pairs as a result! One was even of my own design (The Eclipse Socks on the bottom). Very satisfying. The top two are Monkey and Froot Loops, both patterns from Knitty. If you haven’t been over to my knitting blog… shame! Its about as entertaining as a knitting blog can be… (which means if you knit you’ll love it and if you don’t you might be frightened by the obsession joy of my life.)

• 4 Pairs of Chuckies

I brought my current Chuckies count up to 4 pairs this year. These being ones I actually wear. I have about 5 pairs laying around my parents’ house that will eventually make the trek over… since I can’t seem to throw anything away. The upper right pair I wore to my wedding…

• 5 Harry Potter Movies

Every year In past years I’ve received the newest Harry Potter movie for my birthday. This year was Order of the Phoenix… sadly next year I wont get one for my birthday since the 6th Harry Potter release was pushed back to July 09. You’re ruining my traditions Warner Brothers!

• 6 Outlander Books

Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series stole my heart and my reading time this year. A Breath of Snow and Ashes isn’t pictured because…well it was MIA at the time of the photo. Fantastic (albeit long) books, meaty and fun. (Those two words shouldn’t be in the same sentence together, should they?)

• 7 Self Portraits (a week!)

I started Project 365 this year as well, taking one self portrait a day for one year. It’s tough really, to think of new ways to photograph yourself (unless your really narcissistic). I’m not fantastic at it, but its been entertaining.

• 8 Twilight Couples

I had to do something Twilighty for this list. 2008 brought me Twilight! Not really intelectually stimulating as far as books go, but they’re quick, fun reads. I would recommend them to just about everyone. And props to Stephenie Meyer for inventing the sexless sex scene. (That’s the only time you will ever hear those words come from my. Ever.)

• 9 New Family Members

Marriage involves a lot more people than just the bride and groom. I gained 9 new family members this year! My neice, Lucy, is not pictured, since she was about 6 months old at the wedding, nor is my new Grannie, who was off… somewhere. Weddings are kind of a blur.

• 10 Friends Blogs

Google Reader is probably the only reason I pay attention to other blogs. Its a fantastic utility offered from Google. I have ten blogs of people I know well (some in person, some not). I check them every day along with the dozens of other blogs I stalk across the intertubes.

• 11 Epcot Countries

We went to Disney World for our honeymoon… why not Hawaii or somewhere else equally expensive and boring?? Hey, we can do that any where we want… (and yea, we did it in Disney too.) Plus we’re huge geeks at heart, so where better to celebrate our marriage of nerds than in Geek Central! Anyway, there were 11 countries in Epcot, our favorite of the three four theme parks in Disney. They are as follows… Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, United States, Japan, Morocco, France, United Kingdom and Canada. So… technically we went to a lot of places for our honeymoon!

• 12 Dark Hunter Books

I blame my friend Holly for this, she’s the one who got me addicted to these Dark Hunter books. (There’s four missing that aren’t technically part of the series.) I know, I know (no, really, I know) I always hate on other paranormal romance novels, but these ones have Greek mythology in them! And I have a blinding weakness to all things Greek. I really do… I took every Greek class available to me in college. My ancestors were from Greece… hell there’s even a city in Greece that my family is named after! That being said… these books are grossly engaging! (And yes, I only love Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants solely because Rory Gilmore goes to Greece.)