Long Time... Now It's Christmas.

So much happens in life, and yet I don't feel the urge to write it down.  At least, I stopped feeling the urge.  I suppose it's a habit thing.  If I begin writing things down again, it will begin to feel natural to write things down.  I haven't had time to do much in Blender, so that's why there haven't been any art-related posts.  However, I am making something in Blender now.  This time of year, I have to write a lot of thank-you cards: my birthday is on the 7th, Christmas is on the 25th.  I have a hard time writing cards.  I think most of it is that I don't like to write the same thing over and over to everyone, but I can't think of anything unique to say to each one... so I get stuck.  Instead of all that this year, I decided I would make a Christmas-themed "thank-you animation" to email to the people I would like to thank for gifts given.  Unfortunately, it's going a bit slower than it used to because I'm rather out of practice.  Hopefully things will speed up once I figure out how to get the lighting down.  Modeling comes fairly easily to me, but lighting... uff.  Not so much.  Texturing is even worse but I'm going for a simple, cartoon look, so the texturing is fairly easy.  Lighting is the challenge this time.  Oh, and I'm using Cycles.  It's a lovely engine, but I do miss Blender Internal... just because it was familiar.