Christmas

Like I said, Christmas was really nice. We had a nice day together.

Here's how our tree turned out (it's so perfectly shaped that we were asked if it was fake, ha ha!):

I got a couple of new birds, loved the rufflebutt on this one:


I also bought this sewing basket ornament in honor of all my sewing this year:

This metal carousel is one of my faves:

I like to wrap presents creatively- this was a Nightmare Before Christmas dvd!


I got a good haul- Bathroom Reader book and Sesame Street dvds!

Wire mini dress form for my crafty area (I'll get one someday!):

A hardcover PP&Zombies! Now with 30% more zombies!

Fabric from my Grandmother:

We like to give vintage goodies to each other- I found this lusterware salt and pepper set for my mom. We like lusterware, we inherited a tea set. It's unusual to find this blue color, most is peach or green.

Dad got some fffff...fudge (one of the funniest pieces of merchandising to come from that movie!):
We got a yodeling pickle, that's right:

Cute moose basket from relatives in Alaska:

It came with Slug Butter, lol!
"The Yummy Spread That Slimes Your Bread"

Lars helped Laura open presents:


Bought Mom & myself a stereoscope card from the Keystone Viewing Company (we went to the museum last summer) that depicts the damage from the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.



Also bought Mom a vintage pansy dresser scarf (she loves vintage textiles and pansies!):

I embroidered a train dishtowel for Dad, he does the cooking around here:

Yummy cinnamon rolls, our tradition:

Later that day Mom and I fed the neighbor's swan and ducks:

There were also deer very close to the house, they were fun to watch.

In all it was a nice day with my family, and I got a nice haul! ;)

Pre-Christmas

This ornament (a present from my visiting teacher) sums up my holiday season:

It really was one of the nicest Christmases I've had in awhile. The whole month was really great. As you saw, Ame's shower and the Nativity display were great. The Christmas devotional was great. I also had fun swapping white elephant gifts with the YSA. From what I gather, Rene's wedding in Utah went well.

We got a really good tree from our local nursery:

It was fun to see people's lights:

The Corry green was lit up nice as well:

And so was our house!

We had fun shopping at the mall as a family:

I loved this display tree at Old Navy!

Laura had Grant shopping with us too, he did surprisingly well:


I have a tree growing out of my head, lol:

On the 23rd, us YW (and some RS and Primary) went caroling, which was so much fun. We had wanted to do it last year but schedules and snow prevented us. The girls were so excited, many of them had never been caroling before. We sang all around the local nursing home, the people there were happy to see us. We then went to a couple of member's homes, it was fun to sing to them as well. I also had really nice VT visits with my ladies that same day.

On Christmas Eve, we walked outside as a family and left bread and apples for the deer and critters. We also always read the Christmas story in the Bible on Christmas Eve and hang up stockings as well.

We got our tree up late (we're always late but this year we were really late!), Mom and I got it in the house on the 22nd and we weren't finished decorating til the 24th, but I didn't really need a tree to make me feel merry, it came from within. I really tried to focus on others instead of worrying about me and I think that really helped.

Dan & Sissy

Way back when on December 19th I took these photos for people that I know through YSA. Dan and Sissy originally weren't going to have a photographer (First Ame, now Dan and Sissy, what gives? Why bother if you aren't going to get good photos out of it? Ha ha) but we struck a deal- they got pics, I got experience with my new DSLR (not many marry out here) and I also got to add to my portfolio. It was fun doing this since I haven't shot a wedding since '06! Now that I have a DSLR, I'd like to get back into my photography business- it kinda took a backseat cause I couldn't afford to upgrade to a nice digital camera.

I even got to attend their sealing, it was very sweet. I haven't seen one since 2006 (Yay John and Nancy!) so it was nice to be able to hear those sweet words that bind families for eternity.
I took photos after their sealing, Sissy didn't bring her gown to the temple, hence the black coat and boots. It's hard to photograph people in the snow-everything turned out really gray. Thank goodness for Photoshop! A tweak here and a tweak there does wonders.

I took over 400 photos that day, so I can't show them all, but here's a few:

Loved the nativity outside the temple, what a cute Christmas card:
They had a ring ceremony later that day at the church building two hours away in Fredonia, NY. Neither had family at the sealing, just a few friends attended that.

Yep, they had a Hummer, lol.

Sometimes long exposures can be cool:

Their cakes were pretty, the reception had (of course) a Christmas theme:

Her train:

Dancing:

The guest book:

The beautiful bride:

The reception was at The White Inn in Fredonia. Quite a lovely building:

Hope they live Happily Ever After. They are cute together.

This Christmas

Mend a quarrel.

Seek out a forgotten friend.

Dismiss suspicion, and replace it with trust.

Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer.

Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed.

Keep a promise. Find the time. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen.

Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine your demands

on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate. Be kind; be gentle. Laugh a little.

Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency.

Express your gratitude. Go to church. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child.

Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again.

Speak it still once again.

A friend sent this to me in their Christmas card. I think it's a good reminder of what our Savior taught and what Christmas should be about.

Bells

My grandma sent us this book entitled "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", it's new out this year. I imagine you can find it at Deseret Book if you have one nearby. I liked this book.

It tells the back story of how the song came to be. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a famous poet in the mid 1800's. He had five children with his beloved wife Fanny. Sadly, one day she was injured severely in a kitchen fire, and died the next day. Henry was so badly injured from trying to save her that he was unable to attend her funeral. This loss was devastating to the family. Not long after, his son joined the Union army and was badly injured while fighting in the Civil War. These events inspired the poem (published in 1866) that was later put to music (by someone else) around 1871. There are two verses of the poem omitted from the song, they directly mention the Civil War.

Included with the book is a dvd with an excerpt from a performance by the Tabernacle choir, it features actor Edward K. Herrmann doing a telling of this story with the choir singing the song. It's absolutely beautiful. I had a hard time not crying while watching it, it was very touching. Longfellow believed in the Savior and his Atonement.

The little white church in Sparty rings it's bells on the hour, they chime Christmas music. In honor of this carol and story, I want to drive down to Sparty (5 min from our house) and hear the bells on Christmas day.

Very Merry

So as of today I'm all done with the semester! I'm very excited to start break and have some breathing time to enjoy Christmas time. It's been a good semester, but there's always some crazy business going on.

So after teaching an RS lesson about being prepared and recently teaching a YW lesson about time management, you'd think I'd be all set, right? {snort}

I got a late start on this final painting- my teacher explained the project options to us and then only gave us basically a day to come up with a fab idea and gather all your materials. That's a tall order when you want to do something good, not cliche. It took awhile to gather everything and glue the still life together. So I found myself finishing my painting at 2 am this morning. Other painting students stayed even later!

And even though yesterday started off with no snow, by the time I left school there was three to four inches on the ground. I didn't have boots or a heavy coat with me because it'd been so nice out earlier when I'd left for the day.

Oh, and I had to be at school at 8 am this morning for my other final. And and keep in mind I live nearly an hour away from school.

The best solution was to get a hotel room in Edinboro, by the time I got McD's and got checked in it was 2:40 am. So there I was- no pj's, no toothbrush, no change of clothes, no makeup or hairbrush. I'd taken my other clothes out that had been in the car. I made do, got up at 6ish, showered and picked up a couple things (like a toothbrush) at Wal-Mart. There are few things grosser than having to put back on socks that you've already worn!

And I'm having to walk around campus in my tennies when I should have had boots. Blech.

So that's a lesson to me to 1) manage my time better so I don't have to do projects at 2 am and 2) to be more prepared in all this snow.


Anyhow, on to my painting. It took a long time to do because I wanted it to be good. Things went well in critique today and I got an A! I was also asked to bring it back for display at school next semester.

Am I painting bubbles? Nope, Christmas ornaments!

Normally you would work your entire painting from general to specific, but since I had so many colors and a large canvas (18x24) that was pretty impossible. It became kinda like paint by numbers! You had to look at each ball and separate the reflections into shapes.

A good start:

A little more progress...

and then it was done! It's even more colorful in real life. My teacher liked how they gleamed like vintage ornaments, that was the look I was going for. I really like how the colors popped against the dark. The trick in painting is not to use black but a very very dark color, like blue. If you use a true black then it becomes rather dead looking.

So act surprised....this will likely be used for next year's Christmas cards!