Happy New Year!

Hey! I hope you had a great Christmas. We had a lovely time, and now it's time to take down Christmas here, do a bit of cleaning and get onto the New Year! But first I want to say that I have been thinking about how I have come to rely a great deal on your insights and advice as we've discussed parenting, books, home & hearth, etc. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit of yourself. I really feel like if I knew many of you in person we would be great friends (in addition to real-life friends who pop in here, of course). So thank you! This blog has kind of evolved into a tool for self-improvement for me and I appreciate your opinions, ideas and support so very much.

See you in the New Year. It will be a great one.
xo

Christmas Nativity

I've only put out like 60% of our Christmas decorations this year, mainly because most of the time when I think about it, the garage seems like it would be too cold and at this point that ship has probably sailed. :) But we did manage to finally make our nativity movie yesterday, which is total chaos but so fun. Here's the link if you are interested (it's six minutes).

Have a great day!

Wabi Sabi: Christmas

This December my goal is to worry a lot less about how Christmas looks, and more about how Christmas feels (I am so easily distracted by pretty). And if that means that I let my naked toddler eat the candy off the advent calendar bottom two rows on day 5, so be it.

Here's a great quote from Janene Baadsgaard:

"Like wishing for the fancy images in the women's magazines [or beautiful websites], we often look in all the wrong places for that elusive something that will finally make our life complete. If we make Jesus Christ our dearest friend, we don't have to search any longer. That first Christmas night long ago had a simple cast of characters - a mother, a father, a child. Yet there is nothing in the entire world that can surpass the mission of that tiny babe born on that holy night. Jesus triumphed over sin and death, and because of those gifts we can face anything that comes our way with faith and hope. A picture-perfect Christmas is a tinsel illusion. Coming to Christ creates a rich reality."

Isn't that lovely? Just the re-focus that I needed. I hope you have a great day. Merry Christmas!

Minding the Unruly: the trouble with homemade Christmas gifts

I have a fantasy each Christmas of my children taking time to carefully consider each other's likes and craft sweet, thoughtful presents for one another.

This has unfortunately never quite played itself out well. Probably because I have been a smidge too hands-off in my role as adult over-seer. For instance, last Christmas my then-7 year old made a personalized sash (yes, that's what it is. see above photo) for her 4 year old sister. I'm so sorry to say that it was not received with delight.

This year, I'm going to try ONE MORE TIME to salvage this fantasy but I'm taking the bull by the horns: each child will choose something they can make in a batch for their siblings and that thing will be a cool thing they can choose off of a list of projects that I will assemble.

My ideas so far have mostly come from careful perusal of Design Mom's trove of DIY sibling christmas projects. I'm thinking especially of the bleach shirts, pocket hand-warmers, decoupage sketchbooks, and bubble bath. Also great could be jewelry boxes, jewelry, or frankly, cookies.

Ideas? Once more pinterest is a valuable tool for such research... I'd love to hear things that have worked well for you!

Halloween (with the spooky filter on the iphone camera)

Hello out there, friends! It's been a long time.

October is totally my most favorite month of the year. Where I live in California we have seasons but they are on the subtle side - and so the way you really feel "fall" approaching is through the halloween decorations that begin to pop up on lawns and houses around us.

(I especially love the ghost my girls made and taped on our door. Scary!)

I find Halloween decor to be somewhat of a slippery slope. Years ago I began with the classy natural approach: a bare grapevine wreath, candy corns in a jar on the counter, blown-out eggs painted with semi-spooky Martha Stewart designs.

But soon pine cones and pumpkins no longer satisfied my who-knew-they-were-so-bloodthirsty children so I bought a tombstone for the lawn. The next thing you know we have an upsidown (presumably being tortured?) skeleton hanging from the limbs of a sweet little tree in the front yard and I find myself participating in a dinnertime conversation with the husband and children wondering if perhaps it might not be a good idea to make a pretend fire beneath the dangling skeleton.

What?!

But really, it's hard to compete when you have this across the street from you:

and this:

Yes, those are zombie BABIES behind the dismembered bloody man.

My friend Liz has I think found the perfect middle ground. Check out her flock of paper bats, flying across her family room:

Spooky and yet not something that would be forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Happy October!

I have a fishy feeling about you

I love Valentine's Day! Mainly because I love candy (I'm like Will Ferrell in Elf). I try to think of cute valentine's day card ideas that go along with the kind of candy that I most feel like eating at the grocery store. This year: swedish fish.

The kids covered some paper in watercolor, on which I then printed

"I have a fishy feeling about you."

(This is a good, non-committal valentine's day message, which is a definite requirement when a ten year old boy is in any way involved.)

Cut the paper into little card sizes, then the kids stuck them in envelopes

and filled them with candy.

Delicious.

Christmas Eve Wrap Up

...food for the reindeer

Nativity

Our favorite holiday tradition!

Click here to see the whole thing.

Merry Christmas!

presents for school friends

Ah, finally, finally Christmas break is here! On our schedule now is a whole lot of nothing. And treat making and eating. And Christmas movie watching, and some present wrapping.

The seven year old is in chipmunk world right now. I think most of the time on the school playground is spent screaming, "chipmunk!" followed by lots of scurrying. I could go into more detail here but I'd rather not disturb you with the extent of her imaginary world, so I'll just leave it with this little necklace that she made for her friends. Papier Valise is a great source for tiny and interesting charms, and we like to string them on long pieces of embroidery floss that can be put over small heads without having to worry about being tied or untied, or latched or unlatched. (She is only seven, after all. :) )

Holiday Fair, and sad realization

In classic Lynne-style, I volunteered (along with many others) to make a bunch of little crafts for the school to sell at their Holiday Shop this year. No problem, I thought. You'd like 20 from each crafter? Why, it will be a pleasure to plan on bringing 40! I like making things, and the right kind of craft can sometimes, if you happen to find yourself completely alone, take mere moments to assemble. That was back in August, when I had all the time in the world - a baby who took looong naps, and school days which hadn't filled themselves up. Now however December is almost upon me, with a myriad of other really big projects also on my plate - and so I found myself wandering the aisles of Michael's, panic surging through my veins.

I happened upon a little packet of blank bookmarks right next to the pretty Martha Stewart stickers, and the quick-craft lightbulb clicked on in my head. Bookmarks + stickers= easy and perfect!

It was only as I was driving away from the store that I realized:

I have become the out-of-touch mother who thinks that kids want to buy a bookmark at a holiday gift fair.

I'll have to remember not to put my name on them. I'll tell my kids I brought the candy cane reindeers. :)

Happy Halloween!

This year we have in our house an Indian Princess (with a baby in a papoose), convict, and the Indian Princess's pet cat, Gumdrop. (And a baby with a panda bear hat, not pictured because she was eating breakfast. Go Giants!)

boo!

When we moved into our neighborhood, the first Halloween we were "boo'd" and since then it's been one of our favorite October traditions. If you've never heard of this, click on the link - it's fun & neighborly.

Also, do you see that broom on the door? It smells really good, like cinnamon. My husband likes to stand by the door and smell it. He asked me if I could get him one to put in his car (he drives a mini.) Maybe I'll surprise him one morning and tie it from his rearview mirror. I think it would make me smile all day long imagining such a huge car freshener in such a little car.

I hope you have a great fall day!