Christmas

It is a heart warming feeling I get when I see the Christmas tree lights reflected in the bow window fourfold. May your Christmas be blessed with many heart warming moments and the certain knowledge of our greatest blessing, Christ our Savior.

Bake Sale

The youth at church frequently hold bake sales. This year, the Artist is participating for the first time.

She loves to bake, so I buy her ingredients and happily leave her alone in the kitchen. I think the Christmas Star Cookie recipe she found looks interesting. And she had fun with the process.

After working solo for a little while, the Engineer pulled up a step stool to watch. Soon he was declaring that she was the chef, and he was the helper.

The recipe is from a Bible Food Fun cook book the Artist received as a gift several years ago. She has made several of the recipes from the book, including the fish (shaped) pizza and the cheesy lions featured on the Amazon dot com link. All have been quite good so far.
The candies melt and give a stained glass look, they are so pretty!

Mail!

Less than sixty seconds after I announced to the Engineer, "You got some mail today!" I found him at the piano. He had torn open the plastic cover to the latest Piano Explorer and turned right to the Music Corner.

He did his best, but this one will take him some practice to master.
Update:
After the Artist helped our neighbor's children make their dough ornaments, she made some of her own. The next day she painted them.

Craft Leader

Don't get any ideas that I would be a good craft leader, or even a person to ask about fun crafts for kids. The suggestion is likely to make me turn tail and run.

The Artist is a natural, however. Today when our neighbor's children came over to play she had a home made play dough for them. She led them in rolling and cutting out some ornaments. The first batch is baking in the oven as I type.The kids will not be here long enough to see their creations come out of the oven and cool, but tomorrow the Artist will bring them to their house and they can have at painting their ornaments at home.

The Artist included some ornaments of her own, and a nativity scene, a favorite of mine. Special thanks to National Geographic Kids magazine for the idea and to Grandma and Grandpa for the subscription!

Blessed Christmas

Merry Christmas

Fröhliches Weihnachten

Joyeux Noel

Hauska Joulu

Vrolijke Kerstmis

Buon Natale

O Christmas Tree

Saturday we went back to our Christmas tree tradition. We had taken a break from having a live tree for a couple of years due to the small children I babysit.

This year I don't foresee any toddlers trying to pull themselves up on our tree, so we went back to the tree farm and searched for the perfect tree for us. Not too tall, not too wide, straight trunk. The straight trunk is always the hardest requirement to fulfill.
Hooray! A blue spruce again!!! One of the farm dogs checked in to see how we were doing and posed for a photo before trotting off to help the next family.
We brought the tree home and got it in the stand right away. The decorating had to wait until Sunday afternoon. The kids helped us select which ornaments to use and helped with the trimming.

Christmas Mishaps

Do you have any Christmas stories that were, perhaps, not funny at the time, but now they are?

A few years ago I made various appetizers for my family to enjoy before our Christmas meal. One of the favorite items we all enjoy is broiled bacon-wrapped chestnuts. That year I had run out of toothpicks. I ran up to the local drug store, grabbed some toothpicks, paid and ran home to complete the preparations. When everyone was over, anticipating the snacks, an unusual aroma filled the house. It was not the pure broiled bacon aroma we were expecting, but it was not completely unfamiliar either. Was something wrong with the brand of chestnuts I had bought this time?

They looked wonderful, so I served them. I think my brother was the first to discover the error.
Mint toothpicks.

Everyone still ate them, but not with the ususal enjoyment.

The next year, my brother brought me a box of 1500 hors d'ourves toothpicks!

Christmas Eve

Last year my friend sent me a video of herself playing piano. This year I asked permission to share it here.

I tried several times to load it here, and I could not. But if you enjoy piano music, and if you like "What Child is This," you can follow the link to a lovely arrangement played by my friend, Lea Dobda.

Merry Christmas

Fröhliches Weihnachten

Joyeux Noel

Hauska Joulu

Vrolijke Kerstmis

Buon Natale

Ahhh, Relax

Shopp-ing lists, groce-ry stores,
Driv-ing through the snow,
Oh what fun
To menu plan...

Yesterday got away from me and I never got a chance to post. When Rick is home from work, I rarely get a chance to look at the computer.

But yesterday evening all the hustle and bustle of the day was gone. We lit the fire and enjoyed a quiet evening together. I didn't even pick up the knitting needles until about 11 p.m. But I did get to enjoy a thoughtful gift from my brother-and-soon-to-be-sister-in-law.
A subscription to Knitters! I found lots to whet the appetite. It has been a while since I have done any intarsia work and there are a number of projects here that can entice me back into it.

Seasons Change

I'm not ready for it but it is happening anyway. Over the weekend the Engineer wanted to play outside. When he asked if he could shovel snow how could I say no? There were actually more leaves in the driveway than show, but he had his own hap hazard fun anyway:
He made a slushy pile of leaves at the bottom on the back stoop steps. And another right in the middle of daddy's side of the driveway. Thank you, son.

That was a few days ago. The snow is gone now, if only for a while. It was gone long enough for me to try one more time to gather fresh parsley to add to the crab croquettes I mixed up for last night's dinner. Under the entrapped leaves there were still a few good looking sprigs of parsley large enough to harvest. I have frozen some baggies of parsley to use in the winter , but the fresh is so much nicer.

After knitting the scarf I wrote about on Monday, I began a sweater for the Engineer. I jockeyed his position in my queue partly because he is smaller and I'm following a simple pattern, therefore his projects are faster. So far the front, back and shoulders are done. Hopefully I can knock out the sleeves this week and finish the neckline and seaming during the Brown's game on Sunday. I figured I could get this done rather quickly and keep busy while I stall and stall and stall some more before casting on for a more complex sweater for the Artist. The sweater I make for her will require my adjusting an adult pattern down to her size. I am not confident, so I plan to make lots of gauge swatches and use tons of lifelines and hope not to need too many of them.

As Christmas decorations are going up all around us, I still have my autumn decor bucking the trend. This is my favorite piece. It hangs inside the vestibule door in the living room. The advent box is still up in the attic, but I still hope transition our home from thanksgiving to advent before Sunday morning.

We are going to have our largest group of guests ever this Christmas, so Rick and I have already decided to use our doesn't-smell-real-but-takes-up-a-lot-less-room-than-a-real tree this Christmas. That means two years in a row we will all miss doing this:

One Man's Junk

Is another man's treasure indeed.

And I brought home a treasure from our church's rummage sale.

During the sale I was helping others find what they needed when we were busy and straightening out the picked over tables or folding clothes when we had breaks in the action.

There were so many things donated! We sold a lot, from Friday's pre-sale through end-of-business on Saturday and the tables were still pretty full when we were done. So full that I did not even see this item until someone brought it to my attention (Thank you, L. !!!) when we were cleaning up.

The treasure I took home is a German pyramid carousel. This pyramid was showing some age. Joseph and the shepherd needed to be glued into place and it needed a bit of clean up. I started with gluing the figures and then I experimented with cleaning the fan blades. I'm so excited that they came clean! Next I'll get out some cotton pads and swabs to clear out some of the little crevices and the manger. All the way back to my earliest Christmas memories, mom's mesmerizing pyramid carousel with its delicate and detailed wood carving was the centerpiece of the dining room table.

Since Mom passed away, Dad has scaled back his Christmas decorating. I have not seen their carousel in a few years. But I do remember how special it was to Mom.

Read here if you'd like more about the history and tradition of German candle pyramids.

Addendum:
I did not notice until I began cleaning again that the angels' music is Stille Nacht!