Wha-huh???

I was thinking about it.... 

(and all that thinking was rather taxing, I tell ya)

and it took me many long moments to remember when I last took a picture.

I thought and I thought and I thunk and I thunk,

then the rational side kicked in and said,

"Duh... it was probably Christmas."

Oh, right... that makes sense.

I'm not entirely sure, but it may be possible that the auto focus on my camera is off a bit.

For a while, I thought it was me.

I thought I suddenly couldn't take a picture.

(That may be true too... the jury is still out.)

But this lack of picture taking is one of the many reasons that I haven't been blogging.

I like pictures and I like to be current.  

It's very hard for me to post something that happened more than a week ago,

much less last summer (which was awesome.)

And... ugh... I hate philosophizing about blogging on my blog too, 

but here I am doing it!!!

Darn it.

But I miss my blogging self, and I miss being here, 

and I'm finally finding more time to sit in front of the computer, so here I am.

And now that I've written a bunch of words that mean pretty much nothing,

I'm going to go dig through the archives and slap some random photos in between all those words.

Because I can.

And because I like pictures.

As it turns out... they're all Christmas pics.

(Which is not current... but whatever...)

And yes... my son did get a doorknob and my daughter did get bubble wrap.

That's just the way we roll.

I usually keep my tree up till after New Years...

But my tree gave up...

and so did I!

My pre-lit tree lost most of it's lights before we decorated so we added a few new strands of lights,

but before the holidays were over we lost a few more sections.

We called it our stripy tree,

our zebra tree,

our candy cane tree...

but it really annoyed me.

So I spent most of the day yesterday taking it down.  

It was time.

Look at all of those needles!?

If I'm going to have thousands of needles in the carpet, I may as well have a real tree.

But I don't... it's fake.

And it's old and it's looking a little sad and maybe it's time to go to the big Christmas tree farm in the sky.

Thank you tree for your years of service.

Next year we're getting a real tree.

(It'll probably lose just as many needles 

and with my luck it will come complete with a couple of extra large spider families. )

Shudder! 

 

(But it's time....)

(Does this count as Holiday favorites?  If so... I'm linking to you capture.)

A Post-Holiday Post

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

We certainly did.

It was a wonderful month leading up to the main event

and the last couple of weeks have been especially busy, but in a particularly good way.

Once all the presents were opened on Christmas morning and breakfast was made,

I was able sit back and relax and enjoy a quiet family day.



Toys, new clothes, video games and books

were spread out all over the floor.

We played with our new games and ate lots of yummy cookies.

I didn't take very many pictures.

I just wanted to live in the moment and I'm so glad that I did.

But now I've got a new toy to play with, a light scoop!

and I'm sure I'll be sharing the results of this in the upcoming weeks.

(It's pretty cool.)

Macro Monday

Taking a moment

 It's been a busy, busy week

full of wonderful, fun activities...

a recital

an anniversary

a concert

gingerbread houses

Christmas lights

and more shopping than I would have liked.

 But on the 21st, we took a moment out of the busy-ness to sit down as a family 

to a candle-lit dinner.

It's amazing what a few candles will do to transform an otherwise normal activity

into something special.  

Magic.

You Capture

12 days of Christmas

On Monday I decided that it would be our last school day until after the holidays.

As a homeschooling mom, I get to do that.  

:)

(Don't ask me about the two in public school... 

it so annoys me that they have to be in school until the 23rd!)

I was ready for a break 

and when I counted out the days until Christmas 

and saw that there were 12 left,

I figured we could have the 12 days of Christmas break!

We aren't going to buy any partridges or pear trees

maybe we'll do a little dancing and leaping

... it's possible,

but I definitely wanted to do something Christmassy each day.

Today, we took an idea from Crafty Crow and made a couple of ornaments.

Tutorial here.

Very easy and very fun!  

The only tough part was waiting for the crystals to form.

Not that it took terribly long (just a few hours)

but we kept going back to look and see if anything was happening.

(Not just Julia either... me too!)

We're loving the results.

So sparkly and magical!

Tomorrow, we're getting haircuts, buying Christmas outfits and doing a little gift shopping!

Christmas gifts revealed!

I've been wanting to blog about this picture below since October, but couldn't because it was a gift for my sister, a faithful reader of my blog.

This amazing silhouette was created by Carolin who has an etsy shop that you must check out.

I originally asked her about doing a 5x7 combining two of my sister's favorite things, sewing/quilting and birds.

As e-mails and ideas were exchanged, I sent her the link to my sister's blog so she could get an idea of what type of quilting, etc... Leslie did.

Carolin sent back a rough draft of this picture including the silhouettes of my niece and nephew, something I hadn't asked for and was thrilled to get!

Seriously... adding their faces really put the gift over the top!

I asked her to make it an 8x10 and this was the result.

Amazing.

Also, I wanted to show off the one and only thing I won in all the many, many, many giveaways I entered prior to Christmas. 

This lovely scottie dog came to me from a lovely lady who just happens to live in Scotland.

I love the fabric she used.  He's just adorable.

This guy spent the holidays overlooking the nativity scene, making sure that baby Jesus was doing okay and keeping all the sheep and donkeys in line.

My thanks go out to the creator of this cute puppy.

Check out her blog if you get a chance.

 

The Day after Christmas

Twas the day after Christmas and all through my home

Not a surface was uncluttered wherever  I roam.

The stockings were strewn all across the floor

The recycling was spilling out the closet door

The children were sleeping off their sugar high

“Too much egg nog and cookies and candy”, I sigh.

Mama wanders aimlessly wondering what to clean up

“I know!  I’ll put a new blog post up!”

The kids had a blast with all their new toys

Seeing them all play together brings us great  joy.

The grandparents have discovered the thrill of Wii bowling

But  rock band is what gets me going!

I hope your holiday was wonderful  for you

Filled with love and family and happiness too.

So from our family to yours, we say with delight,

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Silent Night

Although I posted this earlier, I'm linking this to the Macro Monday challenge.

Check out more great close ups here.

Deck the Halls

With boughs of holly!

Falalalalalalalala

Tis the season to be jolly!

 

Happy Winter!

I'm adding this post to the weekly winners.   
Check out more great shots here. 

Christmas fever!

Odd.... my last post disappeared.

Combine one extraordinarily large box of gifts from the grandparents

with the anticipation of up to 20 inches of snow

and only a week until the BIG day

and you get...

Christmas fever!!!

You capture: Holiday Decorations!

This week's You Capture challenge was to photograph your favorite Holiday decor, try different angles and different editing techniques. Get creative!
So here are my attempts....

My Christmas tree resides in the family room where everything is all red and green and warm, traditional Christmas colors.

The living room has blue furniture, so we went with a snowflake, silver, blue theme.

There was an empty basket on top of my bookshelf that was just begging to hold some Christmas decorations.

This is a new perspective on one of those 3-D snowflakes that everyone is making. 

Even Beethoven gets into the spirit during Christmas!

Often our house becomes an explosion of Christmas crafts and cooking, during the weeks before.   So, you may find bowls full of jingle bells...

Or bowls full of candy...

Or cookies topped with the yummy candy.
Hmmmm... that cookie looks awfully good.

Ooops!  Who did that!  I was taking pictures....

And finally...

Here's one you might not see in the Martha Stewart magazine.

I bet not many of you thought of decorating your teeth for Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!

If you want to see more unique perspectives on Holiday decor, click here!

You're a mean one...

Mr. Grinch!

You really are a heel.

You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Grinch!

You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

I've been feeling a little grinchy lately.

Christmas is coming so quickly and I've never been so completely unprepared.

I've made a good bit of progress over the last couple of days, so I'm feeling a little better about things.  In fact, I'm sure I'll be ready for Christmas somewhere around New years. 

Do you think I could get the kids to wait until Epiphany (January 6th) to celebrate Christmas?

Now,  if only I could get this heart to grow threes sizes today.

Maybe it will help if I spend some time looking at everyone else's ornaments over at Mama Bear's blog.

Space Needle Ornament

I mentioned before that I try to buy an ornament from places that we've visited or lived.

Being in the military, we've moved far more times than I like to remember. 

We always appreciate the opportunity to see and experience new things, but some places leave a bigger impression on us than others.

Seattle was one of those places.  We miss it a lot.

I still find myself thinking that we should go down to Pike's Market for some Christmas shopping and Turkish delight, but that would be quite a long trip involving airplanes and such!

We also miss our friends that were left behind.

One of those wonderful friends sent me this lovely skyline for Christmas last year.

I hope she knows how much I love it.

Every time I look at it, I want to click my heels together and say, "There's no place like home."

I could go on and on about all the things we loved and missed in Washington, but I should leave it at that for now.

For more ornaments and their stories go to Mama Bear's blog.

Did you see that sequined tree hiding behind the space needle ornament? 

I have a really good story about that one that I'll share another day.

Some Christmas Craftiness

Since we are a military family, we move often.
That means that our Christmas traditions have to center around what we can do as a family, not so much about going to that "favorite" Christmas shop or show or whatever.
Beside making cookies and putting up the tree, we always find time to do a few crafts and decorate a gingerbread house

Below are a few pictures of the giant paper snowflakes that everyone in the bloggy world seems

You can see the ones that my sister made here.

You can get the tutorial with lots of great pictures at this blog.

I was worried that the weight of the snowflakes would pull too hard and rip where I attached the string, so I decided to sew a quick line.  I figured that that would help distribute the weight a bit better.

The tinsel trees above and the gumdrop trees below also came from Crafty Crow.

I loved the look of the gumdrop trees and thought that they'd go really well with our gingerbread house.

Miss Matryoshka

I remember visiting my sister's preschool and seeing a matryoshka doll for the first time. I had seen this clip on sesame street and it fascinated me, but I didn't know that you could have one in "real life." At some point I must have discovered that they were from Russia, so I decided that if I were to get one, I would have to go to Russia for it.

As a teen I got the opportunity to go to Russia (now the Ukraine) as part of a missions trip. That is where I bought this lovely lady. She's a bit faded and worn and someone lost her littlest doll, but I am so glad I have her.


Since that trip, the world has discovered matryoshkas and you can find them pretty much anywhere, but I still have it in my head that I can only get a "real" one if I go back to Russia. (I don't see that happening any time soon.) In the meantime, I am happy to have this little matryoshka on my tree to remind me of my childhood as well as my trip to the Ukraine.