Hello! A couple of thrift stores in my area sell Christmas items year round, so a few days ago I picked up this:
This Santa is close to 2' tall and appears to be handcrafted. The materials used are of good quality - thick felts, a sturdy striped fabric, dark brown fringed trim and a miniature basket.
Santa was well made too, as evidenced below:
His eyes were nicely painted and his fake fur beard was perfectly shaped.
I appreciated the high quality of the crafting, and of course appreciated the low price as well - under $4.00. It never ceases to amaze me that thrift stores will often stick a price of one dollar on a dollar store item, yet charge rather low prices for well-made handcrafted decor such as my Santa.
My newest St. Nick fit right in with one of his older counterparts (an antique store find):
I could only enjoy this latest addition for a short while, for it was time to pack away the Christmas decorations until December rolls around again. But I'm glad I found him - better late than never!
Hello! I have a tradition, going back several years now, of buying an amaryllis bulb for the holiday season. For the second year in a row, I've eschewed the mass market bulbs and instead have gone to Jonker's, a local nursery.
The difference in size was obvious when I got out the pot that had come with a amaryllis bulb kit(Smith and Hawken brand)purchased at Target a few years back. There was no room for any potting soil once the Jonker's bulb was placed in the pot! I had to use a 10" diameter pot - more than twice the size of the pot that had come with the Target purchase. To be fair, the Smith and Hawken bulb kit was cheaper than the Jonker's bulb, which didn't come with a pot, but sometimes it's fun to get a "luxury" item.
There were several amaryllis bulb choices at Jonker's, and I selected the 'Amigo' variety. Right on schedule, it began blooming on Christmas Eve night, which made for a nice centerpiece on our dining room table.
Still going strong today:
It stands an impressive two and one-half feet high.
A couple of close-ups of the flowers - each is about 6 1/2" in diameter!
So overall, quite the show and worth the extra money I paid over buying a bulb at a big box store.
Hello! Happy New Year! It was out with the old last night, with our usual snack of homemade sushi while we watched the televised ball drop at Times Square.
And of course, it was the last day of December yesterday, so it's time to give the monthly job jar report.
I gave something to a friend, made and distributed guerilla art, prayed for someone's health, and researched an interesting new volunteer opportunity.
I read a shelter book, relaxed by doing some aromatherapy, and read an uplifting book.
I used a craft book as a starting point for designing a Christmas card, practiced drawing and did some sewing.
I cleaned and decluttered several sections of basement shelving, did several other household cleaning projects, did some filing, decluttered some art paper and decluttered a closet.
Since 2013 is now over, I can sum up how the project was either a help or hindrance throughout the course of the year.
The hindrance part: being an avid crafter - and also an avid gatherer of craft supplies - I had included a series of job jar tasks that called for making specific holiday crafts no matter what time of year it was. I'd thought that doing out-of-season craft projects would be a novel way of sparking creativity.
The reality was that after shoveling a mountain of snow on a February day, the last thing I really felt like doing was a Halloween craft (or another craft indicative of a future holiday).
The help: although the dirtiest chores, like cleaning basement shelving, weren't ones that I greeted with cheers, it was nice to get such tasks done. And the job jar system was a good way to keep up with repetitive jobs like filing papers and decluttering.
I enjoyed the tasks that required me to focus on how I could help others, and of course also enjoyed the tasks that helped me a bit, like reading a passage from an uplifting book or doing some aromatherapy.
I admit, there were days I didn't spend much time on the task I'd drawn for the day. For instance, I had drawn "sew something" on Christmas Eve. After making some last-minute gifts and doing some holiday baking, I wasn't about to sit down at the sewing machine. Instead, I sewed a button back on a shirt. Well, it was a form of sewing!
However, a 30-second task like that was balanced by much more laborious tasks, like giving the kitchen stove a much-needed cleaning. It looked almost like new by the time I was done, but it took a fair amount of elbow grease and time.
It was interesting to note that often a synchronicity of sorts occurred - like the two times I pulled a tag that instructed me to make a treat for our daughter. Both times, we were set to visit her at college a day or two after I'd pulled this tag. I would have happily made her some treats no matter what, but I was able to save the shipping costs by being able to deliver the goodies in person.
And there were often times I'd realize that I needed to tackle a certain chore the next day - and would then randomly pull the tag for that very chore the next morning. Cool!
However, there were times that I'd pull a tag, complete its task, only to pull it again a couple of days later. If that task didn't need to be done again that soon, I'd just pull another tag.
Upon looking over my master list of all the job jar tags I'd made, it looked like I'd done all but one or two tags at least once throughout the year. One of the unpulled tags was for a charity project that would have used up some surplus fabric(an easy-sew quilt for a particular organization), so I'd been looking forward to that. But it was not to be.
Will I do the job jar again this year? Since it basically worked well for me last year, the answer is yes, but I won't report on my progress every month.
Hello! And I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Ours ended up differently than what we had planned, but it was still okay.
It began as usual: rustling my husband and daughter out of bed and getting them downstairs for the opening of stockings - always a fun time! Then after breakfast there was the opening of gifts, followed by gathering up the Christmas presents, cookies and food to take to the family gathering at my sister's house on the other side of the state.
There was just one problem: it was snowing when we got up and it continued to snow the whole time we were having our morning festivities. But we dutifully set out, hoping for better roads once we hit the interstate. That didn't happen, though - instead, we followed the line of cars ahead of us, no one going faster than 55 (in a stretch where people typically zoom right past those who are only going a bit faster than the posted speed limit of 70 mph).
At the rate we were going, it would take much longer than usual to get to my sister's, and with no overnight stayover planned, we'd have to turn around and go back home the same day. And there was no guarantee that the roads would be much better for our return trip. So instead, we turned around at the next exit and came back home. It was disappointing, but my sister understood when we called her to say we weren't coming. She said she'd heard of our snow and had wondered if we'd try to make the trip over there.
This change of plans meant that we'd have to have our Christmas dinner at home. If it'd just been my husband and myself, I would have made a fancy pasta dish, but our daughter doesn't like that sort of thing, so I came up with an entree we could all agree on: homemade pizza. I made sure to include red and green toppings - roasted red bell peppers (I make these and freeze them in packages when red bell peppers are in season at our Farmer's Market) and fresh spinach; mushrooms, black olives and onions were added too. (The dough was easily mixed up in my bread machine).
If I had wanted to, I could have formed the pizza dough in a holiday design, like a Christmas tree or an ornament. Would have been fun to "decorate" a pizza in this manner, I suppose, but I opted for the usual shape.
I regretted missing the homemade cannolis one sister was bringing to the family gathering (a nod to our Sicilian father), and briefly pondered making some sort of dessert for us. But since we had all had gotten candies in our stockings - and I had made four kinds of Christmas cookies to take to my sister's - another dessert wasn't really needed.
The rest of the evening passed by quietly. My husband read the hobby magazines I'd placed in his stocking, while I pulled out The Christmases We Used To Know, a compilation of first-person stories from Reminisce magazine. Although the recollections of family gatherings tugged at my heart a bit, I still enjoyed the book very much. And I was pleased to get a phone call from one of my sisters, saying they had all missed us.
The weather is supposed to be much better this weekend, so we will do some visiting with family then. Due to events like holiday get-togethers with in-laws and a birthday celebration on some siblings' calendars, we won't get to see everyone, but we'll at least touch base with some, including my 91-year-old dad.
That is life sometimes! I hope that everyone who got together with families yesterday had a wonderful time.
Hello! This time of year, it's common to be reminded about giving gifts to those whose services have been helpful all year - the hair sytlists, letter carriers, teachers, etc. To be honest, I don't recall my parents doing this; money was tight enough as it was and they had their hands full raising a big family.
But later on, when I was a new homeowner in Stevens Point, WI, I happened to pay my next-door neighbor a visit while she was filling a gift bag full of treats to the letter carrier. She was my inspiration for doing the same for the helpful people in my life.
I don't think I always left out treats to the garbage men, though I always felt a little sorry for them doing a rather smelly, thankless job. But then there was the December I was a homeowner in a new town again - this time, Terre Haute, IN. Between Christmas cookie baking and having attended a cookie exchange hosted by a woman's club, we were awash in sweets! So some of the extras went in a gift bag to the garbage men.
This gesture had an unexpected benefit! Our garbage cans were housed in a cinder block enclosure. The enclosure was roomy enough for the previous owners to have left some junk of theirs next to the cans when they moved out. We never got around to having the junk disposed of, so there it sat all fall.
Well, that gift bag must have inspired the garbage men, for not only did they take the goodies - but they also removed that extra junk! This surprised me, but not my husband. Back in his hometown of Chicago, when his mother had something extra that she wanted the garbage men to haul away, she'd leave a treat for them too - only it was usually a six-pack of beer. Worked every time!
So ever since then, I've made sure to leave a treat for the garbage men. It's trickier here, since their trucks come with an automated "arm" of sorts that lifts the garbage cans up and down for them. Thus, most of the time the garbage men don't have to get out of their trucks, except for when recyclables or other refuse have been left outside of the garbage cans.
Because of this automated feature, I worry that if I leave a gift bag on top of the garbage can, it'd just get dumped into the truck along with our garbage! But if I happen to be home at the time the garbage truck arrives, I make sure to have a gift bag ready to take out to them.
I was home yesterday when the garbage truck came lumbering down our block, so I headed out to it with some goodies. You should have seen the driver's face light up when he saw me approach - that made me feel good!
And spontaneously, he gave me his own gift: he handed over a package of the bags we use for recyclables. I got a kick out of that!
Goodies went out to the letter carrier as well, and we still need to give a tip to our newspaper delivery people. However, there's another group of people I've been meaning to thank, and that's our hard-working snow removal folks. Heck, in my town they even clear the main sidewalks off! For them, I'd have to drop off something to their headquarters, once I find out where it is.
Hello! Although we've been having winter weather already for weeks now, today is the official first day of the season. So what better time to show off this:
Vintage sheet music, a quarter thrift store purchase. Not sure how old this is but probably no newer than the early 1940's. I say this because there's no postal number of any sort in the city address (NYC) of the company that published this. From what I've read, the USPS began using postal zones in 1943, assigning one- or two-digit numbers to the larger cities.
Close up of our winter sports enthusiasts:
Love the graphics of the ice skating couple and the downhill skier!
The first day of winter also means the making of a new weathergram to hang outside:
Simply made from an old manila folder, twine, rubber-stamped words, silver glitter and small circles punched from two kinds of art paper. I added a short poem about winter underneath the flap.
We've had plenty of "snow" and "cold" thus far this month, but I added "ice" because we had enough freezing rain yesterday to give most kids in the region an early start to their Christmas breaks. (I saw one TV news scene of kids playing hockey on their ice-coated street!). And guess what? More freezing rain is a possibility for later on today - maybe a bit of snow too.
Winter wonderland, eh? Oh well, have to take the weather as it comes - no matter what the season!
If you'd like to make your own weathergram, read this post.
Hello! Here is an example of what a combined effort of compassion and knitting/crocheting skill can create:
The Mitten Tree of First Reformed Church in Holland, MI. A metal frame was assembled, chicken wire was stretched over it, and then the mittens were attached for display.
Near the tree is a sign that explains more about the project:
I think it's awesome that a relatively small number of knitters and crocheters produced that many pairs of mittens - almost 400! What a wonderful thing to do for needy families, and from viewing the mitten collection in person, I can vouch for how well-crafted they are! They will undoubtedly be the nicest mittens a person of any income level could own.
Although crafters could use their own yarn, First Reformed did supply yarn for people to use as well, as seen in the above sign's photos. And I'm told that the church already has a fresh supply of yarn - so that a new project can begin in 2014. What a nice thing to do, and I felt this church's efforts deserved a post.
Full disclosure: I am not a member of this church, nor did I craft any of the mittens - I don't know how to knit, and I can barely crochet. But I am friends with an extremely talented knitter who's on staff at First Reformed; she was one of the people who got the (yarn) ball rolling on the Mitten Tree. She had kept me informed of this project throughout the year, so of course I had to see the tree in person.
