Merry Christmas!

That's my favorite Christmas ornament. I picked it out when I was about 3 years old and it's lasted all these years.

I'm still wrapping gifts and stitching up some last minute things that I doubt I'll be able to photograph. I made 2 of THESE today to hold the Jolly Rancher candies my children always long for and I never buy. I made a cool simple item for my mom and her travels, but it's a secret!

We stay home for Christmas and we want our family to know that we love and miss them and look forward to seeing them at less stressful times during the year!

Enjoy the holidays!

Hello Kitty wishes you a Merry Christmas!

Peace

Holiday prep is winding down and we are in the home stretch. Today, I baked gingerbreads for the neighbors and started writing our Christmas letter. We always end up wishing people Happy New Year because I usually send our cards on Christmas Eve.

We received this beautiful card in the mail from some good friends:


We have many international holiday decorations, but this card will get a frame and go into our permanent decoration collection.

We send out special blessings and prayers this holiday season to all military service people and their families.

School's Out!

We just finished my daughter's holiday party at school. Of all the activities I over-prepared, I'm most happy with this snowman craft.



We had to have something that a small group could do in about 10 minutes and this was just the thing. I got stick on google eyes and I prepared the felt hats, scarves, and paper punch colored buttons ahead of time. The snowmen are cotton balls.



This was a good use for the acrylic felt I'm not so fond of, although the quality really varies with this type of craft felt. I wish I knew what brands these are, so I know what to avoid and what to purchase in the future.

I've got enough supplies leftover to make about 20 or 30 more of these.. maybe we'll do it again at next year's party.

The next holiday job to tackle is baking for the neighbors. I think I'm making some gingerbreads, but who knows? I passed out some really delicious lemon curd too, so I might make that. My husband and I are also nowhere near done with our shopping although we've already exchanged with most people except the intimate family we'll be with on Christmas Day.

Tree!

Our son came home from school demanding to know when we were doing our tree: "Christmas is in 8 DAYS!"

"Talk to your father."



We did it! We got the tree up. Honestly, it goes faster than all the other decorating we do. (What am I saying? I do all the decorating, except the tree.) Since the tree pretty much sits right in the middle of the living room, I don't want to deal with it for an entire month. My daughter has her own little tree upstairs that she decorates by herself. When she was younger, she just hung some of her little toys on it.


The kids still always hang their ornaments in one spot on the tree, although they are getting better about it. Our tree is totally full of ornaments. I learned a long time ago to have a Sharpie handy to put the year they each were received or made. Our son thought it was cool to climb under the tree and hang ornaments on the underside.... I had to move those. It isn't finished until we get my Grandma M's thread crochet snowflakes on the tips of the branches.

Now that the tree is up, we move our nightly advent ritual into that room. We even drag out our Christmas Carol songsheets. The kids are so excited! Doing all these rituals is a great way to take the focus off of gifts and Santa for the kids. I am not at all against Santa though. We don't find that Santa interferes with our spiritual goals at all.

My house looks so dark in photos.... I still haven't found the magic setting on my camera.

Christmas Q & A

My friend Sarah just posted this Q&A. I like to read about how other people handle the holidays so here goes:

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping Paper.. I don't like storing the gift bags over the rest of the year.

2. Real tree or artificial? Artificial.. we have limited space and the artificial tree is more narrow at the bottom. I also always forget to water a real tree and then I worry about the giant dry fire hazard of a dead pine tree...

3. When do you put up the tree? Late in the month. I do all the other decorating first and then we have a special night with the kids and do the tree.


4. When do you take the tree down? First week of January.

(The perils of cutting and pasting.. #5 was missing!)

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Hmm... I always got great gifts as a child.... We had a funny tradition of new socks and underwear, and my mom used to give me various kinds of gourmet chocolate... yum!


7. Do you have a Nativity scene? YES! I have dozens... they are handcrafted from all over the world, but they are a pain to set up. All our books have to be stored away so the bookcases are clear for them. We really play up Advent with our children.

8. Hardest person to buy for? Anyone who says they want gift cards... I hate exchanging gift cards and refuse to do it anymore. My policy is that I really don't care if someone wants to return my gift for the money, but we are going to go through the ritual of picking something out and wrapping it up.


9. Easiest person to buy for? Our own kids.

10. Worst Christmas Gift you ever received? All my Christmas gifts have been perfect! ;)

11. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail, but I give myself a pass and this is the last thing I do for Christmas. My cards usually are Happy New Year cards. Just to get the word out: I love those photocopied newsletters about what you were up to this year! Please send those along! When we just get a photo, I always wonder what my out-of-town friends have been up to.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? I cannot list one favorite movie in any category. I like A Christmas Story, Meet Me In St Louis, It's A Wonderful Life, Elf, The Nativity Story...(Actually, I can name one favorite movie in one particular category: My favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is Conan the Barbarian...)

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? I get serious after Thanksgiving.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Hmmm... maybe...;)

15. Favorite things to eat at Christmas? Treats! Endless treats! And the cheese fondue our friend John serves at his annual tree trimming party.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Clear, because our tree is pre-lit, but I like the colored lights best.

17. Favorite Christmas song or album? We have a Billboard Christmas album that is our favorite.. it's actually a cassette tape

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? We stay HOME. Hooray!

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? Yes!

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Star

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? One on Christmas Eve and then the rest in a marathon on Christmas morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Everything happens all at once.

23. What is the “silliest” family tradition you do, or miss doing? When I was a kid, we had small family Christmases, so my mom made up some little traditions. The silliest was that we always baked an angel food cake and put our number 1 birthday candle on it and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.

24. Ugliest Christmas Decoration ever invented? They are all great! I have to say that I think it is really boring in some upper class communities when they only put up tasteful white lights and green garland outside... I like color and some silly inflatable lawn ornaments!

25. Which looks best, theme trees or homey trees? Homey all the way!

26. Gingerbread or sugar cookies? Gingerbread with lemon icing



I'm not in this photo. My spot is the empty place on the sofa. Happy Holidays!

Elf Clogs

I did some elf clogs too! These are for my friend Ginny and her new husband, Joe.



PATTERN and FLICKR GROUP

Stockings are up!

I had some nice fair isle sweaters from my last trip to the Salvation Army store. I was saving them to make totes, but really... We need some cute Christmas stockings.



Ours hang in our entryway along the staircase. The one on the far left still needs it's cuff... I added the poinsettia because they needed a little bit of pizazz and something to unify them a bit. The poinsettia is one that was a paper craft project I did with my students (back in my "past life" as a teacher) at holiday time when we studied holiday celebrations in Mexico. I always loved this poinsettia pattern and wanted to do it in felt. It's not like me to use glue very much, but these are put together with fabric glue and I expect to just tack stitch them to the stockings sometime before Santa arrives.

Here's a tip for sewing with felted sweaters: The curved seams looked terrible and wonky when I turned them for the heels and toes of each stocking. They just needed a little blocking and now they look fine. Blocking is when you dampen the wool with water and shape the wool as desired and let it dry.


My son likes reading my blog so he'll want you to know that he had his first band concert last night. About half of his fifth grade signed up for the band so there were about 250 students playing at his first concert. Since they've only been playing for about 6 weeks, they managed things like "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and "Hot Cross Buns". His teacher is terrific so the kids were very proud and well behaved. It was great fun!