Today's journal entry is about Advent. For the first time since I was a kid, I have an Advent calendar this year. It's shaped like a tall apartment building with lots of windows and doors, and you open one up for each day. Inside are tiny people and animals doing holiday things. It's just darling!
This entry goes into a vertical 4x6" page protector. I put a photo of the calendar on the front:
And the writing goes on the back:
Last night we went to see Handel's "Messiah," at Hampton University, which is becoming something of a tradition for us. We went with some friends and then had dinner afterwards. The concert is always held on the first Sunday in December, and usually when we go, we're all bundled up and running from the car to the concert hall to get out of the cold wind that blows off the water. This year, we were in light jackets, and actually took a little stroll along the water beforehand. Crazy weather. The concert was wonderful, especially the "Hallelujah Chorus," and dinner was great, too. Lots of good conversation.
We are heading out of town for a few days, so I'll have to catch up with my journal when I get back. Todd has to go to St. Petersburg, FL to do some work, and he found me a ridiculously cheap ticket, so I'm tagging along. Last year we went to the ocean side of Florida, so I'm excited about seeing the gulf side this time.
I've been playing with scraps and thought I'd share my Christmas card prototype.
I cut a whole bunch of strips of Basic Grey Christmas paper. The nice thing about most of BG's Christmas collections is that you can mix and match from year to year. And I have years and years' worth, believe me. I varied the width of the strips from 1/4" to 3/4" and every size in between. (It helps to make lots of strips of each size...that way if one strip doesn't reach the whole way across the paper, you can find another one the same width to put next to it.)
Then I ran a piece of cardstock through my Xyron machine to apply a solid coat of adhesive on one side. And I started laying strips down on the adhesive, scooching them up nice and tight against each other. I used 8.5x11" cardstock and ran the strips across the short side.
From this new sheet of striped paper, I cut a bunch of triangles that measured 2.5" at the base, and 3.5" tall. Then I cut each triangle in half lengthwise. When you have an assortment of triangles cut, put two halves together that are cut from different sections of the paper--so that they don't match up.
I rubbed distress ink on the edges of each half (Frayed Burlap) and mounted on a patterned paper background. Then I added a trunk (snipped from a brown scrap of Basic Grey paper so there's a subtle pattern) and a star and a stamped sentiment. Now I just need to make a few dozen of them!
Something very odd has happened to me this fall. I've started listening to Christmas music. I, who have always been very firm that Christmas music doesn't get played until after Thanksgiving, have broken my own rule quite badly.
I can't understand why, either, but it started when we went to the Newport News Fall Festival at the beginning of October and ran into a guy named Timothy Seaman who was playing hammered dulcimer and selling his CDs. As it happens, I was already familiar with his music because I'd bought a couple of his CDs on visits to the Virginia Living Museum, where they sell them in the gift shop.
Timothy has several Christmas CDs, and I bought one called "Incarnation" and took it home, and just had to have a listen, and it's wonderful. It's not just hammered dulcimer, there's also flute and piano and what-not. Very soothing, very happy music. So I got started listening to that, and then in the past week or so, there's been an insidious creeping through my CDs and mp3s in search of other holiday tunes.
I love digging through DVD and CD racks at stores that don't really sell CDs or DVDs, like at the grocery store or Office Depot. The selection is very random, and sometimes I find oddball treasures, like old Cary Grant movies. Several years ago I found a really strange Bing Crosby holiday compilation at Big Lots.
The last couple of years, I've looked forward to Jo-Ann's putting out their little kiosk with holiday CDs. Last year I found a great Frank Sinatra compilation, and this year, I found a CD called "Christmas Treasures." I love that swing-type of holiday music with Frank and Bing and Ella grooving along, and this CD has some songs I have never heard before: Frank singing "Let It Snow" and Bing singing "Little Jack Frost" with Peggy Lee, who has one of the sexiest voices I've ever heard. Burl Ives sings "Jingle Bells," Doris Day sings "Silver Bells," Nat King Cole sings "Frosty the Snowman." It's all the familiar voices, but they're singing songs I haven't heard them sing before. It was a great find! I know, I know, this list of singers makes me sound like I'm 85 years old at least. I just love that happy swingy Christmas sound. If you do, too, it's worth tracking down.Anyway, it's still in the 80s here, and humid, and I am fed up with it! Cranking up the air conditioner and listening to Christmas music is my form of protest.
I'm trying very hard not to give in to that post-Christmas let-down feeling, because it's no good to head into a New Year feeling blue, but January is so grim after sybaritic December. You have to start watching what you spend and eat again, whip your house into shape, make stalwart resolutions that you know you won't keep...oh, it's grim!
Actually, I have a lot of things I'm looking forward to accomplishing and enjoying in 2010, and I hope it will be a good year...but first I've got to get through the next week or two of putting the Christmas stuff away, getting re-organized, making lists and plans. Boring!
Our holiday company left this morning, too, so that contributes to the anti-climactic feeling. The house feels empty without John and Viv in it.
We had a nice Christmas together. On Christmas Eve morning we went up and strolled around Colonial Williamsburg, taking in the holiday decorations. It was COLD.
The decorations were gorgeous...every shop and house puts up different kinds of wreaths and hangings, and it's fun to see what they come up with.
I thought my cheeks were going to freeze off.
Christmas morning we got up, had breakfast, opened some presents, and then my friend Beverly came up from Virginia Beach to have lunch with us. It was a really relaxing day.
Bev got me a "Slanket," among other things, for Christmas. I had been thinking wistfully about those things earlier in the week, because it's been so cold here, and voila! One for my very own. It's warm, too!
I got Bev a bunch of tropical-themed stuff, among which was "Blue Hawaii" with Elvis, so we watched that after dinner and laughed our heads off. Then after she went home, we played a game and sank into a ham-and-cookie coma.
I hope everybody else had a great Christmas, too.
I love those little magical Christmas moments that pop up from time to time. It started snowing here tonight around 6:oo and we had to go to Todd's office party at the Newport News golf club. The club is in the Newport News city park...the park does one of those drive-through holiday lights things every year, and to get to the clubhouse, you have to drive through almost the whole light display. Since you're going to a party, they let you drive through for free instead of having to cough up the $10 per car it would normally cost you. So it's a very festive way to go to a party!
The party was nice--great food, good people to talk to, although no one got drunk and made a fool of themselves this year, which I found disappointing. Through the whole party, we could see the snow falling outside the windows.
When we left, we had to walk back along the road to our car. On one stretch, we were walking between these tall thin trees all strung with pink and white lights, and the snow was falling in these huge wet flakes...it was so lovely. Very magical-feeling.
Especially since snow is such a rarity here. This is our seventh winter here, and I can count the snowfalls on one hand. That includes the dustings that melted by the next day. So snow is an event.
Everyone to the north of us is getting buried, but I don't think the snow will stay here long. It's exactly 32 degrees, and the precipitation wavers between very wet snow and very cold rain. Once it warms up tomorrow, the snow will definitely become rain and that will be the end of it. Todd says the freeze line is right between here and Williamsburg, so 15-20 minutes away they are getting piles of snow, and here it's just white and mushy.
Maybe it will stick long enough for me to get some snow pictures tomorrow morning!
Catching up on my journal, here are the December 12 and 13 entries. The 12th is about changes from Christmases past, and the 13th is about music.
I had a couple spare minutes so I took some pictures of my holiday decor. I've set up my journal on the sideboard so I can enjoy it all the time.
Here are the bottlebrush trees behind the journal.
I ended up grouping bottlebrush trees in various places, which I've never done before and I really like the way they look. I have a snowman collection I like to put out, and this year I scattered some vintage Christmas postcards around, too. This is the wall in the foyer:
The great thing about snowmen is that you can leave them out till, say, Valentine's Day, as a generic kind of winter decor. Perfect for lazy folks like yours truly.
Snowmen especially enjoy hanging out on the bookshelves.
It makes them feel smart even though their heads are stuffed with frozen ice crystals.
I bought this big guy at AC Moore a couple months ago. He has the sweetest face! He doesn't mind hanging out with the DVDs, although he does wish there were Christmas DVDs on his shelf.
This guy hangs out under the lamp and guards a big jar candle.
And these guys are keeping some of my ancestors company on the mantle.
This was a serendipitous combination...I found the glass bowl for almost nothing at an antique store in Columbiana, after Thanksgiving, and then when I came home, I had 12 gorgeous vintage ornaments awaiting me from Barbara at Oodles and Oodles, which is just about the cutest blog out there. (If you like vintage holiday decor, you have to go check it out!) Anyway, the bowl and the ornaments came together quite nicely and now I can enjoy them on my table every day.
Thanks, Barbara!
I took a picture of my little tree today for the Christmas journal.
We usually put up our 6 1/2-foot pre-lit tree, but I needed to rearrange the living room to make room for some of the company we'll be having over the holidays, and there wasn't really enough room left for a big tree. So I dug out my little old 3-footer and put it on a small round table with a vintage Christmas tablecloth pinned around it in lieu of a skirt.
One nice thing about a little tree--they take a LOT less time to get decorated! I'm in awe of people who decorate two, three, four, even more, trees for Christmas. I can barely summon the oomph to get one up and done!
Todd and I had a really fun day together today...first we worked on cleaning up the front of the house, raking leaves, etc., and then we started working on the Christmas lights.
At some point on our holiday travels last week--I think it might have been in Columbus--we saw a house that had a white-lighted star with strings of colored lights radiating down from it, and we both liked the look. So Todd cut lengths of scrap pine and made a star.
We attached it to the front of the house and ran some colored lights down from it. Then it was time to get cleaned up for part two of our day--Hampton University's concert of "The Messiah."
We went last year and enjoyed it so much we decided we should make it a tradition. It was wonderful this year, too, although they unaccountably left out one of my favorite bits, where the baritone soloist sings "And the trumpet shall sound..." Last year the singer gave me goosebumps, he sang it so beautifully.
But the choir was in terrific voice this year, and all the soloists were great, too. As we were walking back to our car afterward, there was a lighted boat parade on the Hampton River, with sailboats and yachts all lit up with Christmas lights. If it had been a little warmer, we might have lingered to watch the whole thing!
Then we had a nice dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and then drove through a few neighborhoods on the way home to look at Christmas lights, but not many people have them up yet. (Actually, it seems to me that fewer people put up Christmas lights here in southern VA than in other places we've lived...I'm not sure why.)
Then we took the back way around to our house so we could see our handiwork for the first time:
Ooh, aah! We were quite delighted with ourselves.
I think we need some more lights on the porch rail and such, and Todd wants two more strings coming down from the star, but I bet neither of us will find the time/energy to accomplish that. I'm amazed we got done what we did. Outdoor Christmas lights always befuddle me--I admire people who go all out and have gorgeous displays. This is by far the most ambitious we've ever gotten!
Then it was time for some chai tea and now Todd is watching a movie while I catch up on my computering. It was a great Sunday.
If you happen to be buying something at Amazon, and you need one more little thing to push your total over $25 so you can get free shipping...may I suggest a nice little Christmas album that I bought for that very reason?
The Joy of Christmas
I have old-fogeyish taste in Christmas music (and almost everything else for that matter.) This is an old-fogeyish album--it's almost fifty years old. It features Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. This is not a quiet, contemplative album--it's a big gorgeous blast of sound, a joyful noise.
It's fantastic and it's cheap. Get it! If you're an old fogey, that is.
Look at these cuties I found for 80% off at Ben Franklin today!
I love it when you see something cute and you pick it up and it's so cheap you can hardly believe it! It's such a rare thing, too...They will look very cute mixed in with my Christmas decorations, don't you think?
Hm, could I use the word "cute" any more times?
Well, I was having a really nice Christmas vacation till I woke up with a sore throat on Christmas morning, which was a full-blown chest cold by Friday morning. Then I spent the next couple days all alone on the couch at my in-laws' house at the lake, coughing, and missing lunch with my cousins and aunt, and also missing my sister-in-law Julie's visit with my niece and nephew, whom I only get to see twice a year.
By Sunday morning, I just wanted to be at home. It's so much easier to be sick in your own house. So we left a day early, missing my extended family's get-together and my cousin Pam's announcement of her engagement and my cousin Janine's announcement of her pregnancy. I hate missing out on stuff--I already feel like I miss out on so much, living so far away, and then to be sick for half of my trip...I was feeling pretty sad and sorry on Friday and Saturday, I can tell you.
There were a couple of silver linings:
-Since my in-laws now own two homes, I had a place to sit and be sick in peace and quiet, which was such a blessing, since every other place I could have stayed was full of people and kids.
-When you're sick, everybody's so sweet and concerned about you. It made me feel very loved, which I knew I was anyway, but it's nice to be reminded.
-Leaving early meant we were driving across rural Maryland and rural Virginia in the dark and got to enjoy a beautiful sky full of stars, not something I see much in light-polluted Hampton Roads.
That's all the silver linings I can think of, though! Well, it was probably a good thing that we left Sunday afternoon...I have been coughing worse than ever today and that would have been hard in the car. I was able to keep the coughing mostly under control on the way home with Mucinex, but today the Mucinex only seems to help for a short while, and then it's back to coughing again. I am so over the coughing!
When I was a kid, June Allyson used to do these commercials for female incontinence pads, and I used to think how horrible it would be to get so old you couldn't hold your own pee. Now I know how horrible it is--when I cough, there ain't no holding it, and it's just run, run, run to the bathroom all night long, which is exhausting in and of itself, besides the coughing.
To get through the nine-hour drive back to Virginia, I broke down and bought some of those old-lady pads, and what a help they were. And still are, as I continue to cough-and-pee. So I learned a new cold coping skill, too. I guess that's a good thing...
I had a nice time before the cold, though--my mom and I did a little shopping and had lunch on Monday and I looked through a bunch of old family photos with my dad. Tuesday we took my nephew Tanner and niece Kylie to Pittsburgh and had an absolute blast with them. They are eleven and seven years old, and exactly the right age to really enjoy stuff with. And Christmas itself wasn't so bad--I was feeling under the weather at that point, but not flat-out sick, and we had fun opening presents and having dinner. Got to spend a couple really nice evenings with my in-laws, too. So it wasn't all bad.
I was feeling pretty good this evening; the Mucinex and Vicks Vap-o-Rub were working and Todd brought me home chicken in garlic sauce and hot-and-sour soup, and I was reviving...and now I'm back to the uncontrollable coughing again. Oh well. I feel like I might have passed the worst of it. I hope so.Hope everybody else had a happy and HEALTHY Christmas!
Well, we are getting ready to pack up and hitch up the sleigh tomorrow morning and head for warm, balmy Ohio, where it's currently snowing and about 20 degrees. I'm actually excited at the thought of seeing some snow, although I know there are plenty of people across the country who would smack me for saying that! I know Todd and I are going to freeze--our blood gets thinner every year we spend in the southlands.I'm just sitting here waiting for Todd to get out of the bathroom so I can go in and get prettied up for his office party. The house is all cleaned up except for the vacuuming, all the presents are wrapped, and my suitcase is packed with everything but the last-minute stuff. I have the past few days' Christmas journal entries about half done, so I'll have to finish and post them when I get back. I'm really going to try and get them done even though Christmas will be over, and not put them off till November like I did last/this year!I hope everyone who stops in at this blog has a really wonderful Christmas, safe travels, good times, and at least a moment or two of peace and calm to think about the meaning of the season, whatever that meaning is for you.I'll sign off with one last picture...is there anything happier than a Christmas tree with lots of presents underneath? Seems a shame to pack them all up and leave the poor guy all naked down below.
Have a merry Christmas!
About ten years ago, this commercial was playing on TV a lot, probably around Christmastime.And it never fails to make me laugh out loud every single time, even a lousy copy like this. I actually have a copy of it on one of my old videotapes of MST3K--I usually edited out the commercials when I taped them, but I HAD to leave that commercial in! That kid is adorable.
I thought of it tonight when we went off to Michael's to see if Santa could get me a Cuttlebug for Christmas at 50% off, but had to settle for a raincheck. Santa said he would wrap it up in a fancy envelope for me. Chuh. Maybe I should frolic about with it and snuggle it close like the kid in the commercial!
Isn't it funny how you start December feeling sort of on top of things, and then get busier and crazier as the days go by? Or does that just happen to me?
It's not really all that crazy here, but we're both quite busy getting last-minute gifts made and that sort of thing. We're heading to Ohio on the 21st (we decided to stay for Todd's office party on the 20th after all) so everything has to be bought, created, wrapped, and packed by then--it's always a bit of a crunch at the end when you have four or five or six days lopped off of your Christmas prep time.I sat down for a little while this morning and got the past three days' worth of Christmas journaling done, though. 
We went up to Williamsburg on Sunday to get one last gift, and stopped off at Merchants Square downtown to see a performance of "A Christmas Carol" that I'd heard about. It was a one-man (well, one man plus a stage manager named Bob), 15-minute version, performed by an actor named Ed Whitacre on a tiny set built into what looked like a little moving trailer. First he came out and explained the show, sort of like a circus barker...
And then he became Scrooge and acted out the story with the help of some strategically placed props. See that little table he's about to fall asleep on?
With a little flip, the table top comes off and becomes the ghost of Jacob Marley!
The ghost of Christmas Past came out of Scrooge's bathrobe pocket...the ghost of Christmas Present was a puppet that emerged from the picture above the fireplace:
And the ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come was a long skeleton arm that emerged from the backstage door and then pushed out Scrooge's tombstone from within the fireplace.
It was all very clever, very broadly played, with some audience participation to keep the kids interested...I really enjoyed it. Of course, I love the story of "A Christmas Carol," and even though it was a condensed version, it hit all the important bits, especially the part about getting a second chance to start over, as Ed-the-actor runs out of time when the stage manager's stopwatch hits 15 minutes before the end of the show. Ed falls into despair, but Bob the stage manager perks him up with a chorus of "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" and Ed leaps back into the show just in time to show Scrooge's wonderful awakening on Christmas morning. Very entertaining!Okay, I'm off to get a few more things crossed off my to do list. See ya!
Here's my journal page, about Advent:
And here's the picture I used, full-size, just because I liked how it came out:
And here's the quote, of which I only had room to use a bit on the page:
"The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before…What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God's [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon." -Jan L. Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas. (Zowie, that's expensive on Amazon!)
I really like that quote. It reminds me of this story in Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, by Connie Willis (which I recommend all the time to anyone who will listen) called "Epiphany," which is about Jesus' second coming and unlike anything I've ever read on the topic before. It's hard to describe, but it has the same shadowy, dark, expectant feeling as the quote.
One of the things I like about this time of year is the early dark and the lights shining through it. The dark seems to fit with that mood of waiting, wondering, expecting.
It's been a quiet week here (in Lake Wobegon...no, no, that's not right...)--I've been turning in early nights, with a book, and nursing a sore throat and headache that seem to come and go and not develop into anything. Also making out Christmas cards, wrapping presents, etc. Todd had jury duty on Monday and a very distasteful incest/rape case (as he said, "Why couldn't I get a nice, easy cocaine possession?") and other than that, he's been waiting for the chance to go night fishing when the tides and winds are right. He went last night and came home with a few more big striped bass, one of which we'll be having for dinner tonight, yum.
And it's coooold! (Yay!) That's it from here.
And the writing goes on the back:
Last night we went to see Handel's "Messiah," at Hampton University, which is becoming something of a tradition for us. We went with some friends and then had dinner afterwards. The concert is always held on the first Sunday in December, and usually when we go, we're all bundled up and running from the car to the concert hall to get out of the cold wind that blows off the water. This year, we were in light jackets, and actually took a little stroll along the water beforehand. Crazy weather. The concert was wonderful, especially the "Hallelujah Chorus," and dinner was great, too. Lots of good conversation.
