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Happy New Year to those near and far! I hope that 2008 is everything you hope it to be and more.
I'm looking forward to some big changes in the upcoming year. A new home, a renewed sense of calm and gratitude and just a bit less stress than the year we are leaving behind.
May the year be rosy and bright for you.
Okay out with all the red, green, gold and glitter. It's time to undecorate.
The tree is only partially done but I've gathered up all the other various bits and pieces of holiday litter (it starts to look like litter after 12/26) and put it away. I'm in the mood for white, cream and pale green.
Someone should have told my nose Christmas was over. It has just gotten into the holiday spirit and is doing its very best impression of Rudolph. I caught a bit of a cold during the festivities. My body betrays me like that - as soon as I have some time off of work it decides to come down with something. Never fails.
Well I should finish up the tree so I can vacuum up the last of the glitter. I think it's time to undecorate when the ornaments start taking themselves off the tree. Every now and then a tired, dried out branch just can't hold on to its ornament anymore and it slides off with a little thump on the carpet.
Happy Unholiday Everyone!
I was tagged by the lovely Jill from Bailiwick Designs - but silly me - I was way behind on my email and blog reading and didn't notice until a couple of days ago. The rules state that I need to specifically tag two others (rather than the vague 'if you want to participate consider yourself tagged') but since the holidays are practically over I'm not going to tag anyone.
Here are 12 random, Christmas related things about me.
When I was about 5 I wanted more than anything a Betsy Wetsy type doll. When I got up and Christmas morning and saw her under the tree I was so overcome I had to go back to bed for a while.
When I had my very first Christmas tree I bought these cheap plastic icicles to hang on the tree. I still have them and use them every year. They are actually quite pretty.
I have a little ceramic bluebird that I always put on the top most branch of the tree.
My favorite Christmas carol is Little Drummer Boy. I especially like this David Bowie/Bing Crosby version. Probably because it's just so weird.
Before I was married and had children my friend and I would get together on Christmas eve and drink and make anatomically correct gingerbread men.
I always make my Dad a crab omelet on Christmas day.
Normally I always make a cinnamon pull apart for Christmas breakfast but this year I've decided to buck tradition and make a blueberry crumb cake from Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa at Home.
I tend to go non-traditional with my Christmas wrap (except for last year I actually did red and green). This year it is pale blue, silver and white.
Last year was the first time I ever saw A Christmas Carol.
I've seen the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker four times since 1986.
My mother in law gave my husband two beautiful hand blown Christmas ornaments from when he was a child and I BROKE one of them. You cannot even imagine my despair.
Nothing looks more tired to me than a Christmas tree on December 26th. I tend to undecorate as soon as possible.
There you have it! Happy Christmas Eve everyone!
This is an interesting development. I'm ready. Presents are all wrapped and under the tree. The house is clean. Everything sparkles and smells nice.
And it is three entire days before Christmas. I got kind of a late start out the gate this year but everything just fell into place. The parking fairies were even on my side.
Normally I'm plagued with Christmasy nightmares of realizing it's Christmas day and I've completely forgotten to buy any gifts and I'm frantically going up and down the aisles of 7-11 trying to find something that isn't a dusty can of baked beans or 10-40w motor oil to give as gifts.
I was a wee bit tardy getting to the post office this year. I showed up on Wednesday morning to mail off a package to a certain 53575 zip code (Ahem. Please tell me it arrived and fluff the bows, will you) and there were only two people in line ahead of me. I remarked upon this to the postmistress and she just looked sternly at me over the top of her glasses and said "that's because everyone else has already mailed their packages." Whoops.
Next year I am going to forgo ribbon embellished with glitter. It as insidious as confetti. I'll be sweeping and vacuuming glitter until Labor Day. And you think I'm exaggerating. One year we had a New Year's Eve party (back when we could actually stay up past 11:00pm) and someone brought confetti. I was finding that confetti for YEARS afterward. We even moved and I was vacuuming it up in the NEW house. Explain that one.
Well now I'm going to make myself a Christmas Cosmo, put my feet up and just enjoy the tree for a few days. I wish for all of you peace and joy. Merry Christmas.
The decorating is done!
And I only broke one ornament this year (so far, knock on wood and all that...).
If you have been decorating yourself I bet you anything that if you hopped up right this second and looked in the mirror you will have glitter stuck somewhere on your face. Probably several places.
The glitter and occasional broken ornament is worth it though, isn't it? We are at that magical stage where it makes your heart swell a little bit when you drive up to the house and see your Christmas tree all lit up, sparkling in the window.
We attended the Dickens Faire in San Francisco on Sunday. Rick and I drove down and met up with assorted family members for a day of Victorian shopping, eating and general revelry. That's Nicki, Sara and Ryan on the right above. This was before Nicki bought her hat from the Bosphorus that she wore for the remainder of the day and well into the evening. Ryan looks like some random dude wearing a suit but he had a bowler hat on most of the time, fitting in with the whole Victorian vibe.
Sara even had a newsboy cap, going for the Oliver Twist look.
There are a whole host of characters that roam the venue. We saw Charles Dickens (of course. It was his faire, after all), Jacob Marley, the Cratchits, various chimney sweeps (if you see a chimney sweep, give him a kiss on the cheek and you'll have good luck), Mad Sal and her Ladies' Oratorical and Recreational Society (with an emphasis on the recreational, wink wink).
We saw shops selling magic wands, jewelry, books, pottery and Victorian Clothing. The picture above and below are from The Dark Garden, a shop that specializes in corsetry. The windows had live mannequins and if you were missing one of the men in your party you could generally find them loitering outside this shop. They claimed to be most interested in the engineering of the undergarments and how they made certain aspects of a ladies anatomy look like it was defying gravity.
The very first thing we did was stop for tea at Cuthbert's Tea Shoppe. We sat ourselves down and had a nice cuppa and some scones and crumpets to fortify ourselves for the day's activities. Which was mostly more eating.
There were meat pies, fish and chips, roasted chestnuts, bangers and mash. I had falafel with tzatziki sauce because nothing quite says Victorian Christmas like Greek food. Hey Sara had dolmas, so I wasn't the only one. I did have hot buttered rum to make up for it (prompting Ryan to tell a joke about cider that I can't repeat here...).
It was a fun, fun day and if you are in the California Bay Area it's worth the $22 to get in.
One last picture of a teeny flower stand tucked into an alley. It's kind of dark but it looked so real it really did transport us back in time, if just for a few hours.
One of the many odds and ends I've amassed over the years are these microscope slide mailers. I've seen some amazing miniature pieces of art created using these functional bits of cardboard.
In the back of my mind I pictured doing an Alice in Wonderland kind of montage but never had the images that would fit in the slide holder slots.
Today I was at our local art stamp shop and I found a sheet of Victorian angel photographs that were sized just perfectly for the mailers so I plopped them into my shopping basket.
When I got home I started googling examples of pieces done using the slide mailers. One of the images that caught my eye was on the Artchix website. This is my homage to their Divine Advent calendar.
As always when I am working on something I think of a million ways I would do it differently the next time. For example - I tend to be impatient to see the end result and start putting together the big bang elements when I should work out the small details first. The next time I'll to my gold edging (around the little window openings) before I glue in the images. Same with doing any imbossing. I did practice my handwriting before trying it on the finished piece and my practice writing was way better then what I did here. Ah well.
The past couple of days have me daydreaming about my dream studio. I need a big old space with acres of counter and storage. I know I have metal crown embellishments somewhere and if I had my nice organized studio I'm sure I could have found them easily.
Actually I'm not certain I'd be allowed in Santa's workshop. I'm sure he has stringent rules about tidying as you go. Something I am not a fan of, as you can clearly see.
I'm making Christmas cards this year - very similar to my Halloween Party invitations. I just love that scallopy circle cut out.
Cook's Illustrated The New Best Recipe is excellent for pressing glued together bits, kind of like pressing flowers.
I made two prototypes to see what color scheme I wanted to go with. I'm not really a red and green Christmas kind of girl. I like creams, whites, silver, sagey greens.
But I'm thinking definitely the red on this one. You can't tell in the pictures but there is sparkly 'snow' on the rooftops.
Okay - now to go tidy up.
We are a little slow around here. This picture was taken this morning, looking out the dining room window at my Dad's house. This tree is a brilliant red and glowy orange and when the light is just so the entire livingroom is infused with a golden glow from the reflection.
And yes, those are roses still blooming under that Maple tree. Gotta love living in California. The land of no seasons.
Finished! I did say my goal was to get it completed before Thanksgiving and that didn't quite happen but close enough.
Basically we started off with one free cabinet, four free bun feet, two stained pine bookcases, a clever husband and lots of paint.
There are a few ugly, yet needed things on the shelves - like the wireless router and telephone. I'm also thinking a 42" flat screen television would look much better than our circa 1987 big tube monstrosity.
Here's the Before if you want to refresh your memory on how things were:
The 80's oak cabinet found a new home. And thank goodness for Bins primer to cover all the knot holes on the pine bookcases.
I still have one last finishing touch I want to do - I want to put decorative wooden appliques on the cabinet doors - I need to either order them or find a local lumberyard that carries them. I figure when I find them I can paint them and then apply them. So there may be an after after post.
