I’m back, I’m back! I hope you all had wonderful holidays? I did, but I’m glad to be home again, and feeling so ready — almost itchy, really — to get back into the swing of giving. I was seeing people I wanted to gift while I was away, but I was with friends or family members at all times, and as much as I was enjoying spending time with them, the lost Elfing opportunities were driving me nuts!

I’m also just bursting to tell you all about my first recipient of 2010! To celebrate the New Year, I’m going to make it a big one — one of my rare $500 recipients — and I just cannot WAIT to tell you about him. But I’m not going to, yet. I’m holding off, because today is Tuesday, and you know what that means…

It means we have a $50 Elf Giveaway winner!

At long last, it’s the spectacular, superb, stupendous, splendiferous, sensational Serafina! She has been such a warm and wonderful supporter (and contributing author) of this site since day one, I’ve been secretly hoping for her name to come up for ages. And now, it finally has, and I’m feeling like it was worth the wait to have her be the first winner of 2010. Congratulations, Serafina!

And now for even more exciting news: We have THREE new Elves! That means we now have 19 Elves from six different countries, including one who just signed up as I was beginning this post, and also including our very first male Elf, who joined on Christmas day! Each of these three sound absolutely wonderful, and hopefully you will all get to know them yourselves, through Elf Chat and blog posts.

A BIG warm welcome to elder elf, Anastasia, and Juno. We’re so glad to have you on board!

And HEAPS of luck and magic you to all!