It's A Little Tarnished ...

 ... but I still like my angel chimes in spite of their slightly bedraggled appearance. 

I got this 33 years ago at Ryan's insistence. We were at a little 5 & 10 store (which has sadly closed) and they had one on the counter with the candles lit and the angels whirling around. Because he was two, Ryan was fascinated by the candles but also by the angels and chimes. I think it was $2.99, so of course I bought it.

 

 The base has some spots of rust on it, 

 

and the angels have also dulled over time and have their own areas of wear. But I enjoy watching the angels whirl around and dinging the chimes for a few minutes each year. It always reminds me of good memories, like the kids promising to be good if I would light the candles and laughing hysterically when I accidentally installed the angels the wrong way and they flew around backwards.

 

 

I've thought about replacing it for several years, but I haven't found another red one like this. Now it seems as if they are all shiny brass and cost about 10 times what I paid. More importantly, they also don't come complete with sweet memories, so a little bit of rust and tarnish is just fine with me. 

Counting Down to Christmas

I don't decorate for Christmas nearly as much as I used to, but earlier this year I thought about what decorations I really liked and enjoyed. The answer was Advent calendars. We always had them when I was growing up, and they were simple old-fashioned paper ones with little doors numbered 1 through 24. You were meant to open a door each day and a picture would be revealed, often of a cute animal, ornament, or some other Christmas-y scene.

I got Advent calendars for my boys one year, but they weren’t all that impressed with sweet, simple pictures. The next year I tried Playmobil and Lego Advent calendars. They liked the toys much better, but delayed gratification wasn’t really their thing. By the second day, they had opened every box on both calendars, but at least they had a great time playing with the figures and Legos afterward.  

 

I looked around the internet for an Advent calendar that was similar to what I was imagining, but so many of them revolved around "stuff" - jam, tea, wine, beauty products, even fishing lures and rubber duckies. But eventually I ended up at Bronner's Christmas Wonderland. They had just what I was looking for, in fact, so many Advent calendars that I had a hard time making a choice. I ended up getting two of them, Neuschwanstein Castle and Woodland Friends. 

 

 

They have been perfect. I’ve really enjoyed opening the little doors each day. I even remembered a tiny hedgehog from one of my childhood calendars, and sure enough, there it was waiting for me on the very first day.

 

 

It’s not often that something under $20 brings me this much joy, but these Advent calendars certainly have. I hope that you've got some favorite seasonal or holiday decorations that bring you as much enjoyment as my Advent calendars do for me!

 

 

A Good Idea

I first wrote about this good idea 10 years ago, but I'm am still using them and thought it might be time to revisit the topic.

Christmas was always a fairly simple, easygoing holiday before I had children. I worked in various hospitals from Florida to New York depending on where we were living, and because hospitals never close, I worked on Christmas for 15 years. By the time we were celebrating our second Christmas with Ryan and Justin came along in 1993, it was slowly dawning on me that Christmas was becoming more complex and complicated. I did love orchestrating it for my young sons, but there's no denying that it took quite a bit of time and some late nights. I could see what the problem was but didn't have any good solutions.

I was browsing in the fabric store after that Christmas and chanced upon some Christmas fabric for $1.00/yard. I couldn't resist this incredible bargain, so even though I didn't have specific plans for it, I bought a bunch. On the way home it came to me - I would sew gift bags. Wrapping presents is one of the holiday-related chores that I don't enjoy one bit, and by spending some low-stress sewing time throughout the year, wrapping gifts would be as simple as popping them in a homemade bag and tying the ribbons.

I don't remember how many I sewed that first year, but they were such a success that I've been sewing bags almost every year since 1994. I enjoy choosing fabric and along the way I branched out into birthday bags.

I've amassed quite a stash of bags, but that way I almost always have the right size for any gift. When my sons are both settled on their own, I envision divvying up the bag stash and gifting the boys with their own bag collections. This hasn't happened ... yet. 

I've still got some fabric for a few more bags, but I haven't sewn any recently. This might be something to put on my list for January. 

We even save and re-use tags. I couldn't find any tags for Jess and Nugget, so they got new ones. I don't have good ideas every day, but this is one of my better ones and has worked wonderfully for me! 
 

O, Christmas Tree

There has been some discussion of tinsel recently (from Carole and Vicki) and they've gotten me thinking about tinsel throughout my childhood. I was born in 1957, so we used real tinsel on our trees, the kind with lead in it. 

My father was almost a tinsel tyrant. After we decorated the tree with ornaments, he got out the tinsel and we all started carefully placing it on the branches, one strand at a time. That was fine for the first five minutes, but my sister and I quickly tired of one strand at a time and moved to the back of the tree where we could put on clumps of tinsel. After a few minutes, we were even more impatient and tried to get away with the Cardinal Christmas Sin of throwing tinsel at the tree. My father always noticed, reprimanded us, and gave us the annual lecture about how one strand at a time placed carefully and thoughtfully on each branch was the proper was to decorate. By this time my sister and I had often started crumpling the lead-based tinsel into balls to throw at each other.

But tinsel (properly placed!) did make our trees look like this:

"Real" tinsel was discontinued in 1972. I think my father stockpiled several boxes and we actually took it off the tree and tried to save it for a few years, but the strands broke and looked quite bedraggled. I wonder if I might have ended up a bit smarter if I hadn't been exposed to so much lead while decorating one strand at a time throughout my childhood and my sister throwing lead tinsel balls at me? I do kind of miss our tinsel-draped trees but this is my second year of not putting up a tree so there's nothing to put tinsel on. 

How about your trees - tinsel or not?
 

Old Slippers, New Slippers

These are my old slippers. We've always called them "Cabeluggs" because they came from Cabela's and weren't quite Uggs. They are very comfortable, but over time the inner fleece lining has gotten worn and matted, to the point that they are really too big. Justin has been nagging me for a long time to get new ones, telling me that I'm going to trip down the steps someday and how much he hates the slapping, clomping sound they make on the stairs. I knew he was right, but sometimes comfort is hard to give up.

But he finally took matters into his own hands and got me new slippers for Christmas. They are very warm and comfortable, and more importantly, they fit better. No more clomping on the steps, and the soles are not slippery at all. They have cute acorn imprints on the bottom, and they also make me laugh. There is a tag inside that says "faux fur" and each time I put them on I'm reminded of a friend in elementary school that thought it was pronounced "fox". I wasn't sure I wanted to give up my old slippers, but now I'm as quiet as a Ninja in my new slippers. (And what 64-year-old woman doesn't like to feel like a Ninja and comfortable at the same time?!)

Tri-State Holiday Decorations

I've traveled to MD, NJ, and PA over the past week, and everywhere I've gone there have been plenty of holiday decorations. When the kids were little we used to enjoy taking drives to look at Christmas lights in the evening, and I miss that. So I've been making a point out of looking for holiday decorations and taking pictures of some of the more interesting and original ones. I've shared these with my kids and now I'd like to share them with you. 

I'm truly not passing judgment on any of these or making fun of them. Many are not my taste, but I have not been appointed as Chief of the Holiday Police, nor am I the arbiter of good taste in Christmas decor. Don't forget, I am a person who once put an artificial, three-foot Christmas tree on a Corona beer box. To each his own!

I have never, ever seen a Christmas Tasmanian Devil, and this might be a first for you, too. He prompted quite a bit of discussion in our family. Ryan wondered why he seemed to be on some sort of toilet, but we decided that the white bit at the bottom might represent snow. I thought those yellow things protruding from his hat were supposed to be antlers, but John said they were sticks. I'm not sure that antlers or sticks make a lot of sense, and none of us understand why he is pointing at the viewer. 

I had to Google this one to fully understand it. During the day, it is simply an inflatable, spherical, white Mickey Mouse, but he's completely blank and without a face. I wondered if it was backward but I didn't feel comfortable wandering into their yard to check it out. But ... "the eight-foot-tall inflatable is actually a screen on which a projector displays precious and pixie-dusted holiday scenes." The Disney Fashionista website uses lots of exclamation points to explain that "projections utilize every part of the snow globe, including the ears, base, and hat!  It’s like having a mini Disney Parks light show right in your own yard!" It also comes with "heavy-duty lawn steaks" so who could resist?

This small army of toy soldiers, snowmen, Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus, with a few reindeer is installed just down the street in NJ. I've always wondered how they store so many figures in a small house, and they seem to add a few more every year.

I'm not an electrician, but I'm pretty sure that it's not safe to use multiple extension cords rated for indoor use by wrapping them in a plastic bag and securing them with regular Scotch tape. (Every connection for all the figures above was made this way!) Luckily the firehouse is just two blocks away just in case. 

In case natural decorations are more your style, I present Rudolph and the equally weathered and aged skull of one of his family members. I don't think there is anything else I can even say about this interesting tableau. 

So how about you? Do you display any delightful, intriguing, or unique decorations yourself or have you seen any in your neighborhood? I'd love to hear about them!

Museum of Me: Favorite "Somethings" From the Holidays

The Museum of Me staff has been hard at work on this month's installation. As you might expect it's A Favorite "Something" from the Holidays. 

Many of my favorite holiday somethings are ornaments. I always thought this was true, but I proved it several years ago with the lengths that I was willing to go to display some of our ornaments. Ryan, Justin, and I had always gotten the tree together, and it was a fun and easy activity. The boys joked around, carried the tree, we were able to throw it in the back of Justin's truck, and then they helped to put it in the tree stand and bring it in the house. In 2018, Justin was in Texas, Ryan was in Colorado, and John viewed getting a tree as an odious task that he had no interest in. I wanted some sort of tree, so I resorted to setting up a three-foot artificial tree that Justin used to have in his room when he was in middle school. It looked small and insignificant, so I ended up placing it on an empty Corona beer box to make it a little taller. I hid the Corona box (sort of) with our traditional tree skirt, but it still looked like a small, sparse artificial tree on a Corona box. I wish I had a picture of it, but it's slightly embarrassing to even recount this, and it might be even more so if I shared a photo. It was about as bad as you are imagining.

So in 2019, I bought an artificial tree from Balsam Hill, and have been happy with it. It's not nearly as much fun as getting a tree with Ryan and Justin, but it looks nice, I can set it up by myself, and it has plenty of space for all my favorite ornaments. I haven't set the tree up yet this year (maybe this weekend), so on your visit to the Museum today you'll see two of my all-time favorite ornaments featured by themselves on a little Norfolk Island pine. (The Museum staff was specifically instructed not to place this little tree on a Corona beer box.)

The first piece in the holiday favorites is an angel that I've had since I was 5. Our church had a children's candlelight service, and all the kids in the congregation got to choose an ornament from the tree that stood next to the nativity. I remember considering very carefully which ornament was the best one and taking a lot of time. It may have been an attempt to move things along, but the minister came over, plucked this one off the tree, and said it looked just like me so it was clearly mine. I felt so special, so this ornament has always been special to me. The tinsel is tarnished and flaking off, but I can still recall a bit of that special feeling when I hang it on the tree. 

I couldn't decide between these two treasured ornaments, so the staff and I set both of them up for exhibit this month in the Museum. When I was in first grade, my teacher instructed all of us to make an ornament for homework, and then we would bring them in for our classroom tree. I wanted to make the most beautiful ornament but had no idea what it should look like or how to begin. Many times, my mother and I just weren't on the same wavelength, but this time she totally understood what I wanted. 

We dyed an egg pink (my favorite color when I was six) and then my mother blew it out. I was amazed that she could do this and sure it would break, but my mother assured me we could do it. We added glitter, holly leaves cut out of felt, and sequins for berries. For extra sparkle, we glued on rhinestones. 

I knew it was perfect when we finished it, and I remember it as being the most beautiful ornament on the first-grade tree. It's a marvel that it didn't get broken on the bus taking it to and from school, and even more of a miracle that it has lasted 58 years. Every year when I get it out I expect it to be cracked or broken, but so far it's remained whole. It's a bit of a Christmas miracle and one of the best remembrances I have of my mother. 

Be sure to visit Kym today for her new exhibit, and several other bloggers may also be participating. The Museum exhibits will be changed monthly on the second Friday of the month, so please stop by again in January for the next carefully curated installation. (The gift shop is on the right on your way out!)

Christmas Eve

Wishing all of you a peaceful Christmas Eve (or Thursday), and a very Merry Christmas (or Friday). This year is different, but I'm hoping for quiet joy, comfort, moments of delight, and love for each and every one of you.

My Very Own Greenhouse

(of a sort). My mother loved and collected Dept 56 porcelain houses, so much so that my sister and I were left to deal with over 400 of them after she died. She had gotten some for me as Christmas gifts, but I am not much of a collector of tchotchkes, so I don't think I ever displayed them. My boys were small and fragile porcelain houses don't do well with little boy hands trying to play with them. (Someday I'll tell you about the T. rex, velociraptor, and pterodactyl that visited Jesus in the manger.)

But now the boys are grown, I've sold all the excess houses, and kept a few special ones. I don't decorate nearly as much as I used to, but these pieces are important to me and don't take me too long to set up. 

There is the North Pole Weather & Time Observatory, the Candy Cane & Peppermint Shop, Tassy's Mittens duplex with Hassel's Mufflers & Woolies, along with some elves, Mrs. Claus and Santa, and Santa's sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

But my favorite piece is Mrs. Claus' Greenhouse. It was one of my Mother's last gifts to me, and I really love all the details,

like the snow in the corner of the panes, the clay pots piled outside, and the poinsettias and plants growing inside the greenhouse. 

Even at my advanced age, I can almost imagine that I can fit inside and garden along with Mrs. Claus. I'd love to have a real greenhouse so I could have the ideal conditions and space for all the plants I'd like to grow, but Mrs. Claus' Greenhouse is the next best thing!

Sometimes Monday ...

... is a relaxed day to knit and take it easy.

My to-do list has dwindled, and all I have to do is walk up to Main Street and get some truck magazines, lottery tickets, and cigars for Justin's stocking. (He smokes five/year when he's fishing in the summer.) "Wrap" is also on the list, but that isn't a big deal because of all the Christmas bags I've made through the years. It will take me about ten minutes this afternoon.

I decided against a tree, real or artificial, this year, and it's been quite freeing. I do miss displaying our special ornaments but for now, I'm happy with the owls in my Norfolk island pine. 

So today is a quiet day, in which I hope to finish knitting my last Christmas hat, and maybe even return to a bit of selfish Hitchhiker knitting. I'll be back at the end of the week. I hope your holiday week, whatever you are celebrating, is filled with moments of peace, joy, and contentment.

Three on Thursday

The older I get, the less I decorate, so the decorations that I do get out of storage and clear of dust have to be important. These all fit the bill beautifully and it makes me happy to see them displayed, so here are three of my favorite decorations. 

These are tomten that my parents brought back from a trip to Sweden. I have eight of them, but these four like to hang out in the ceramic archery tableau that Justin made. My mother retired from the postal service with big dreams of traveling. She and my father went on a trip to Sweden, met relatives, and had a grand time. Shortly after they returned my mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and she didn't get to travel anymore. These tomten remind me of the importance of doing things when you can because time is never guaranteed (plus they look cute and mischievous!)

This sparkly sequined ornament is not really my style, but when Ryan was young and before Justin was born, we used to go to church rummage sales. He picked out this ornament kit, and when he was not willing to part with it, we bought it, brought it home, and put it together. It's not perfect, but we had a good time together, and I think we did pretty well considering one of the crafters was only two years old. It reminds me of the sweetness of that two-year-old and that good enough can often be far better than fussing over perfection.

Our nativity set is full of memories. John built the manger out a clementine box (back when they were wooden) and some plywood. You can't see them very well, but the kids helped paint a star and there is also an owl painted on the rafters inside. We found inexpensive figures of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the three kings, a shepherd, and animals that we liked, and the boys were happy to set them up, finding just the right spots for all of them. 

It turns out that Justin had stolen a "holy raccoon" figurine, but we didn't discover this until much later, and he has graced the nativity ever since. At some point, Ryan added the "holy hedgehogs" so they also have a place of honor next to the raccoon. Not exactly traditional, but they remind me that the message doesn't always have to be conveyed in the usual conventional way. 

What are your favorite decorations? I hope they hold lots of memories for you and bring you happiness!

From Our Home to Yours

Whatever you might be celebrating - Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Omisoka, Yule, Saturnalia, the Winter Solstice, or Monday - I wish you and all those you hold dear good health, warmth, peace, comfort, joy, contentment, and love.

From Our Home to Yours

Whatever you might be celebrating - Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Omisoka, Yule, Saturnalia, the Winter Solstice, or Monday - I wish you and all those you hold dear health, warmth, peace, joy, contentment, and love!

Decorations Delivered

I like using greens to decorate for Christmas, and debated buying some bunches when I was out searching for glitter-free poinsettias. I decided against it at the time, thinking that a walk in the woods at my mother-in-law's this weekend would do me good, and I could cut plenty of pine, cedar, and holly myself.

But then these guys pulled up early yesterday morning. They are "my" tree guys, but they were here to trim my neighbor's trees. They wanted to use my driveway, apologized for the noisy chipper but chuckled politely when I asked them to use it on the quiet setting, and got to work.

I got a little more excited when they moved the truck and I saw that they were also going to trim my neighbor's pine tree. I ran out to talk to the guy on the ground and after he handed me a hard hat, I asked him if he minded if I cut some of the greens that they were trimming. He told me to take all that I wanted, so I got my clippers and stood back in my hard hat. (Sorry there's no selfie; he already thought I was a little odd.)

Thanks, guy in the bucket. The best greens are a little higher up.

Yes, please trim some for me from the very tippy-top!

How lucky I am to have a big basket of decorations delivered! I haven't done anything with them yet, but my hands smell delightfully piney and I've got loads of greens to decorate with. Thanks, tree guys!