Christmas Packaging

We finally felt good enough to decorate the house a week ago.  I haven't taken any pictures yet, but it is all sparkly and shiny!

Due to sickness, package wrapping was put off until the last minute... meaning that there was not great thought put into the overall packaging design which I really enjoy.  There are so many good ideas in the blog-sphere and in the online magazines this season too.

I started out with this Tiffany blue wrapping paper with white snowflakes (Target after-Christmas purchase from 2 years ago... I bought every roll I could find in the store!) and then found this great cotton string with silver in it.  The string was a yard sale purchase from I-don't-remember-when, and I found it languishing in a box in storage.  It looks very mid-century with the paper.  I brought out my box of tags and put blank manila ones on the packages.  (Everyone should have a box of these tags... so versatile!)  The packages looked good, but looked a little pale.

So I added a red stamp of a snowflake to the tags.... and it works!  You can see the spool of string in the background.  It might actually be yarn for weaving.  I have another spool which is much, much larger.  I think I will be using this for the next decade or so.

I do like red and blue together.

I have been in hyper-productive mode for the past three days sewing and knitting up a storm.  Unfortunately if I post my projects here, then everyone will see what they are getting for Christmas, so I will post after Christmas.  Another unfortunate thing... I didn't take pictures of anything before wrapping.  As soon as it was out from under the machine, into the wrapping paper it went.  I will try to be diligent on Christmas and snap some pictures.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is complete!

We finally boxed up and packed away the Christmas ornaments, tree, and all the other trimmings. We actually sorted through all the decorations, condensed packaging, and labeled boxes. We wound up with two extra large plastic bins. YAY! Which means that the assorted items used for the Christmasifacation of our house are now taking up less space in the basement in the off season.

Here are a few parting shots of Christmas... and then it's onto other things....





My silhouettes...




The large one of the two dancers has domed glass and was a Christmas gift this year.



And the elf finally got his new hat...



Mister E was very concerned that it should be sewn or taped to his head, so that it didn't fall off at night when he was making his trips back and forth to Santa filing his nightly reports. I assured the little man that the hat would not come off.

Coming out of the fog of illness... again!

I have been sick off and on since Thanksgiving... which puts a serious damper on productivity and creativity. My darling son gifted me with some other cold/flu bug that lasted from New Years until last week. The spouse (who also got in on the gift) is still recovering.
So consequently, Christmas decorations are still up. Here are a few images from Christmas in Portland this year.

Peacock Lane... an amazing tradition here in Portland.




Downtown Portland at Christmastime from the top of the Galleria Parking garage.

The Elf On the Shelf....

.... had an accident.



Irving got a hold of him.



... which resulted in great panic from Mister e who was very concerned that The Elf On the Shelf (that is the elf's name and is said in entirety when the elf is referenced) would not be able to make his nightly journey to Santa to deliver his daily report. So I stayed up far too late (2am-ish) and adjusted and reattached the arms. I didn't have time to make a new tiny hat... so he's sporting the triage look for the rest of the holidays.



The husband would also like me to mention that this elf is his from when he was a little boy... making it doubly important that I finish the hat repair before we pack him away for the rest of the year.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Christmas Sparkle...

Finally, after being sick for over 3 weeks, we felt well enough to finish decorating the house. The living room has looked like this for the past 2 weeks, and the kids were getting ancy about the lack of general decoration. Of course, the house had not been properly cleaned in over a month due to being at the farm for a week and a half and then being sick for the following 3 weeks. Here was what we started with Saturday morning:



After much cleaning, dusting, plant moving, we opened all the decoration boxes and began.

The kids took over the piano with the assortment of Christmas stuffed animals. Fortunately Mister e is terrified of the ones that play music, so they were left in the box. I am very happy not to have to listen to all musical stuffed animals playing simultaneously.




The bar all alight with lights and festive glassware. The Egg Nog cups are a vintage find by the spouse this year. He and Miss E LOVE Egg Nog. I think they are on their third jug for the season.




This vintage nativity belonged to the spouse's grandmother. Most of the figures are chalk. The animals are blow molded plastic with their original prices tags of 15 cents still on the bottom. The barn is cardboard. The kids want to play/rearrange everybody all the time. I hope it survives the season. We haven't put it up in a few years.





The mantel sparkling in progress....




Our vintage aluminum tree with its rotating, color changing light....




We have three gorgeous vintage glass tree toppers that I wanted to display upright on the mantel. In order to keep them up right and not become a casualty of broken glass, I had to fabricate some holders. I wandered through the craft racks of Jo-Ann's (not my favorite fabric store on the planet) and found these wooden wheels and bought some dowel that fit in the holes perfectly. No gluing required.


Ta da....









I am sore and tired today because I haven't done that much moving for a month! I am still coughing and wheezing if I go from outside (cold air) to the inside (warm air) too much. There's more to show too... I'll post more later. But the overall effect is very festive and the house is so pretty.

Christmas Pajamas

So we are back in Portland after driving 8 plus hours on Tues the 29th... the last 3 hours through A LOT of snow in the Gorge. I'm still sick and my daily routine seems to be getting up, doing one project (i.e. cleaning out the refrigerator and scrubbing down, putting away Christmas presents, cleaning up kids play table in basement for the forth time this year), and then taking a 2 hour nap with the vaporizer running full bore... only to climb back into bed around 8:30pm and lay there in the steamy dampness. I am really, really tired.
But I have located my camera patch cord and can post some Christmas gifty projects!
These were the pajama fabric choices for this year:



There is always great excitement to see what prints I have managed to find for the pajamas. My nephew is quite the fly fisherman, and I was extremely fortunate to find a fly fishing print... which he was extremely excited about.

These are the recipients on Christmas Eve doing what they did for the entire week we were there. My youngest in the front removed something from Nana's floral arrangement for the picture... for extra beauty, I guess.



The gift wrap... I'm particularly pleased with. We stopped putting on bows or anything with 3-dimensions, since all the packages have to be packed into boxes to go to the farm. So this year I got out my stamps and found a silver pigment pad and went to work.



It looks all Martha Stewart-y. Also I am only buying one color of wrapping paper for EVERYTHING. So if you receive anything from me in the next 6-8 months it will be wrapped in red. I'm tired of having all these little bits of this and that left over.

Merry Christmas

I am posting on Christmas Day because I am sick and confined to my room while the rest of the family celebrates and I keep my germs to myself. It is a bit of a bummer, because I really enjoy Christmas. Everyone sounds like they are having a good time, and I'm sure the dinner smells good. I can't smell much of anything.

I completed the traditional Christmas Eve pyjamas on time and the children (my two and my sister's two) opened them last night and put them on with grand flourish. I seem to have forgotten my camera patch cord and will be unable to post pictures until I return to Portland. I have apparently packed 3 sets of patch cords for my iPhone... so no danger of not being able to plug that in.

We did watch Mark Morris' The Hard Nut last night on TV. It was amazing and creative and a great interpretation of the classic Nutcracker.
Scene from Act 1....

.... not your traditional Victorian family. Love the graphic patterns on everything.

The snowflakes actually snowed by throwing snow from their hands.

Gingerbread Men

Miss Elsie wanted to make gingerbread men, and the spouse is gearing up to construct a house out of gingerbread as well. So last night, we made a few men.... careful not to open the oven door in case one got away.



We are using the magazines to control the thickness of the dough. I know you can buy those doughnuts that slip onto your rolling pin which do the same thing... but we didn't have them... and the magazines are about 1/4" thick and work just as well... as long as your 3 year old doesn't try to unwrap them partway through the rolling process.





Of course while the cookies baked, there was a lot of munching on the candies decorating the men. You do have to sample all the components.



I melted some colored white chocolate used for candy making for the decorating. It was late, and I didn't have time to make a batch of frosting and Miss Elsie wanted to give her teacher a couple of the Gingerbread Men for Christmas. Thank goodness for candy making supplies and a microwave. They white chocolate melted in a few minutes and piped out really well from the pastry bag.... well enough that one of the men has eyebrows.

The rest of the men are baking today and will be decorated this afternoon. The house will be under construction soon.

It's Christmastime!!!

I seem to be firmly in the one post per month realm. I really want to break out of that trend and blog more.

We put up one of our amazingly retro aluminum Christmas trees last week.


Of course if you have an aluminum tree you MUST have the rotating light.



Which spends the rest of the year inside it's vintage box.



I did take some great pictures of all the vintage glass balls on the tree. I'm trying to figure out a way to make one grid of pictures with all the images. It's a lot of pictures.