O Tannenbaum, 2011

Can't quite get the whole tree in the picture!

 Just love getting out the ornaments each year....the strings of beads the children made long ago, the wooden ornaments I bought at the Kristkindl Markt in Nurnberg even longer ago, the goldfinch nests found hidden in Ohio's long grasses after the Fall migration....  These days we use perhaps half of the ornaments, so I pick and choose.  My favorites seem to be the animals--including a Cajun crawfish (trip to Louisiana's Cajun Country), several cute cows (a story for another time), and the various birds.  Oh, and my 'soap bubble,'  a blown-glass ornament that I adore. 

English paper piecing...and memories of beekeeping

Fake nut-hatch with real gold-finch nest and shells from house-finch broods

Now, really--isn't this darling?

The soap-bubble--a little yellow from the flash....

Wishing everyone safe travel, joyous gatherings, and restful times.

Christmas Decor

What's Christmas without decorations?  
     A new trick!  Thanks to http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagstar.html for the instructions for cutting a five-pointed 'Betsy Ross star.'  (I used Patrick Merrell's Sunday NYT puzzle for this year's crossword-themed ornament.)

Christmas Traditions

Every couple or family develops holiday traditions--and deviating from them is sure to bring howls of protest.  At our house, the Christmas Eve dinner is always lasagna--the perfect expandable entree; when we lived in Sunnyvale, California, our next-door neighbors always came over to witness the excitement of our two small children and share that meal.  A particular angel *must* fit on top of the tree.  Presents are opened on Christmas morning, and Christmas stockings may be investigated while the sleep-deprived parents stoke up with coffee and quick bread.  Gifts are opened one at a time.  

Some other 'traditions' are not quite as much fun.  When the children were very young, we always had at least one run to the ER or pediatrician; my mother once offered this comforting thought:  'When they reach age nine, they finally seem to stop catching every germ in town.'  Over time, other domestic disasters took the place of childhood illnesses.  There was the Christmas blizzard that took out the electricity (and therefore the water pump) for several days; the year the hot water heater gave up the ghost on Christmas Eve; the year that the bathroom ceiling came down...and of course, quite often these little problems come up when there is a full house.  This year:  the dishwasher died (just past its five-year warranty period.)  

Feeling tired, Dear Husband declared that we could just have the new one delivered and installed; his determination lasted just until he realized that this would tack an outrageous $192 onto the price.  So, it's back to do-it-yourself; we'll go pick that sucker up on Thursday, first thing.

Last night I dreamed that I looked under the refrigerator and saw a small but growing pile of sawdust below a neat round hole; I kept watching, and out popped a wee screech owl, much to my surprise!  I don't know how I'm going to break the news to my husband.

Santa Claus brought us this new blender (replacing the 45+-year-old avocado green Osterizer.)  This was to be our big Christmas present up until the dishwasher quit working.  

O Tannenbaum!

Ah, the family Christmas tree! 

In our case, the DHubby's mother being a first-generation German-American,  the tradition of this holiday symbol is obviously more legitimate, right?  Oh, never mind.  It's the holiday thing--lots of fun and fragrant to boot!

Our little nuclear family has a lot of Christmas tree history, too.  Our first Christmas with a child in the house was in 1980.  After the somewhat traumatic sequence of pre-eclampsia/C-section/crash/NICU/cardiac surgery, we were a little woozy...and by the time we thought of putting up a tree, we were reduced to the moth-eaten remnants spurned by more planful holiday-lovers.  We put up our Charlie-Brown-reject tree and decorated it as best we could.  Thereafter, each evening we were treated to the clink-shatter-smash of ornaments falling to the floor from withering branches, followed by the swish-patter of dropping needles.  By Christmas Day, the thing was a bald, skeletal nightmare.  (Moral:  some years, it's better to give up.)


Fast forward!  We were in Real Christmas-tree Country!  Northeast Ohio!  We bundled up our two darlings and hiked out to cut our own tree at a Christmas Tree Farm.  How jolly!  We took it home and put its foot into a big bucket of water in the garage until time to Put Up The Tree.  Of course, at that point we discovered that in fact, we had a tree with a large, five-gallon-bucket-sized lump of solid ice on its lower trunk.  (I lower the curtain over a grisly scene in which Daddy is chopping ice away from the tree--ice chunks are flying all over the hallway and melting into slippery pools everywhere.)  

The next year, we knew better!  We waited to cut our tree until we were actually ready to set it up in the den.  Of course, it snowed; we bundled into snow suits, boots, hats, mufflers, gloves, and set out.  The Tree Farm was a Winter Wonderland of snowflakes, drifts, and fragrant greenery....we found the perfect tree and sawed it down.  Trekking back to the hut, we paused to let the children frolic in the snow and throw themselves down to make angels over and over.  Then we discovered that we'd locked the keys in the car.  (I'm not even mentioning that it was Daddy who was responsible for this little goof-up.)  The kids were wet and beginning to feel chilled; we were in the middle of nowhere; and the Christmas Tree Farm people wanted their money....but it all got sorted out once the Chesterland Police arrived to break into the station wagon.  Ah, memories!  I'm not even mentioning the obscenity-laced scenes while we endeavored to set the tree up straight in its tree-stand--one parent prone under the scratchy boughs while the other barked instructions:  "Tighten on the left!  Your OTHER left!"  Decorating followed a certain sequence:  lights first; garlands next (often newly-restrung and augmented with popcorn-and-cranberry strands); then the other ornaments.  On the hearth or beneath the tree, little villages of blocks or Legos were built anew each year. 

The next year, we gave up hiking and bought our tree from the front of the lot--pre-cut.  When we got it home, though, we realized it was a second-growth tree, with a kinked, knobby lower trunk, difficult to maneuver into a tree stand.  The tree fell over...once, twice, three times....until we set up cross-braces nailed to the walls.  The year after *that* we had a Very Bad Cat...followed by the Year of the Leaking Tree Stand, the Year without Electricity or Water, and the Year of TWO Bad Kitties.  

Yet I held the line:  only a real tree would do!  I hewed to this principle until I realized that we were going out and acquiring and setting up the tree alone; the children would arrive from their widely-distant colleges and assist with some decorating, but then depart again before the onerous task of UNdecorating commenced.  And we were still vacuuming up newly-discovered hoards of needles as the following Christmas approached.  

So....after more than 25 years, I fell from grace.  I went to Hobby Lobby's 70%-off sale and purchased a Fake Tree--one with pine cones and lights already in place!  It lived in the garage almost a full year before it was called into service, but now.....it's our tree.   

 Most of the ornaments have particular significance, history, and associations.  The set of Chinese straw fish commemorate Laura's years with an aquarium and her devotion to her fishies.

Birds were an ever-present part of our lives on our eight acres on Chagrin River Road.  When the fields browned in the Fall, we almost always found at least one small tidy gold-finch nest hidden among the tall grass stems.  These make cunning decorations.  


The gold orb is the lone survivor of a set of six that I purchased at Nurnberg's Christkindl's Markt.  I also have a large number of wood ornaments--angels, mushrooms, apples, tiny replicas of toys--that I love seeing each year; they remind me of the ornaments from my own childhood years in Germany.  






This year's tree has a decided 'critter' theme.

Goosey is newer--but irresistible.  Her legs dangle and swing.  



Next to Goosey is an 'inchie,' a quilted ornament (a warm-up piece cut into inch-square bits, then bound with zig-zag stitching in variegated thread and hung with a ribbon.) 

 There are also English paper-pieced ornaments and tatted hearts and wreaths, reflecting various projects and techniques I've learned. 

                                        

The nut-hatch is 'an upside-down clown.'

My favorite ornament--which we call 'the soap bubble.'

Mudbug from Cajun Country

Hobby-related....

From a Kentucky handicraft shop
..but made in China.  Sigh.