Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Getting ready for the holidays

We have our Christmas tree up. We put up all of the "nice" ornaments, the collection of Hallmark ornaments that the kids have picked out each year, the hand me down ornaments from our parents, and all of the needlework ornaments. In the picture you can see some cross stitch ornaments, some ornaments made with plastic beads, a flying pig, a wooden rocking horse, a carved cat, a glass basketball, and an oldfashioned radio that can be tuned to a North Pole station. The rest of our ornament collection is equally eclectic.
I gave up on the large shoe box of kid-made ornaments. Some of them were made by my children and some of them were made by me and my brother when we were little. With an 8 ft high tree (with a chunk taken out of the back when my husband forgot it was on top of the van and drove into the garage anyway) there just wasn't enough room for styrofoam balls with colored pins stuck in them, pieces of cardboard with macaroni glued on them, or colored foam core creations. They will have to stay in the box and wait and see if we get a larger tree next year.
As it is, about half of our ornaments are hand made. They reflect memories of the people and places they came from as well as my children's passions as they grow up. Each year we have each of them pick out their own ornament to purchase. We have gone from Thomas the Tank Engine, to the Incredible Hulk, to a snowboarding polar bear with my son. Now he thinks he is too old and cool to pick an ornament. My daughter's choices have included a multicolored bird, an American Girl doll, three dalmation puppies, and this year a basketball.
I have been stitching and finished Scary Scraps. My son reminds me that it is Christmas now, not Halloween but it is not too early to start getting ready for next year. Mosey n' Me's story about Scary Scraps is that he was too poor for white linen so he is wrapped in scraps. Considering that his scraps are made up of needle necessities floss and Rainbow Gallery metallics as well as DMC, I don't think that he is really that poor. He was fun to stitch on 28 count over two threads. The different segments of pattern and color were bite sized segments that were easy to work on in the evening and I can't look at him without smiling.

1 comment:

  1. He looks wonderful! Congrats. I know what you mean about smiling. I don't think I can look at any of Frank's patterns without grinning.

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