A few, very few of you received holiday cards from me, but that doesn't mean I love you any less...I try to be very personalized in my correspondence by either making the cards by hand or including photographs. But there are only 24 hours in a day and I rarely can carve out a few hours in the month of December to get to my holiday card list.
Here's a sneak peak at one card I made (no two are alike).
It took me a while to hunt down this 7Gypsies print tray, but I was determined to put some heritage photos in it. When I finally sat down to work on it I wasn't too happy that the measurements for these tiny boxes weren't included, which would have meant quite a bit of guessing if Kat hadn't come to my rescue with a cheat sheet. Initially, I wanted to make this to take to family reunions because it's small, but I ended up making it for my Grandmother as a Christmas gift. I hope she likes it...it's antique looking and she's really a glitzy golden, bling, bling type of Grandmother, so I hope she enjoys it anyway.
Note: In the D.C. Maryland area you can find these trays and similar ones by Tim Holtz at Queen's Ink at Savage Mill.
Out of three kids concerts, I only made it to one...Jonathan's debut with his cello. Unfortunately, he forgot his music and we had to turn around and go home to get it, so I didn't get a front seat to get any great photos of him in the orchestra. So have no fear...mom recreated the scene (mainly because he's so handsome in his shirt and tie) and made him play his parts when we got home.
Last Friday, I enjoyed having a few friends over for great Thai food, a favorite edible gift (from woman-owned business) Edible Arrangements, my favorite wine and got a little card making and scrapbooking done too.
Oh, I received flowers from my little Tay-Tay too.
I'm a huge fan of live performances. Sometimes the cost is prohibitive with four children, but I was blessed to take six other people with me to see the National Ballet Company performed the Nutcracker right in my hometown. It was fabulous, the youngest member of our group was 4 and an aspiring dancer. What a thrill it was to taker her to the ballet.
Photo Credit: www.nationalballet.com
Check off one of our advent activities.
Life 's just not busy enough, that I add doing an advent calendar to the December madness, LOL.
This is my first attempt and we'll see how it goes. My goal is to just partake in some low-cost activity, craft or just plain old bible reading in the days leading up to Christmas. I looked up lots of calendar ideas, but thought I'd put that big barrel of socks to some good use.
I decided not to sleep away my free time during Thanksgivng since I didn't have to cook, I got our crafting underway. Being the GREAT Recession that it is, we will once again look for low cost ways to decorate, celebrate and show love to our family friends and strangers. Already, the girls and I spent an evening doing a makeover of a home office space for a friend (I promise to post pics as soon as we put on the finishing touches).
It's always a challenge to come up with crafts to do all at the same time with kids that age between 4-15, but I mangaged to wing it as usual. On this particular night we used stencils (very easy for the 4 and 6 year old to do) paper clipping the stencil to the paper and teaching them the pouncing method is crucial. Thanks Lisa Renee for the stencils, we found them in your give away box. The finished products can be trimmed and used as gift tags or mounted on notecards.
I also purchased inexpensive wooden decorations from our local big box craft store, using fine tipped paint brushes made it much easier and less frustrating for all the painters. We also customized the ornaments by adding glitter and snow to certain elements.
Step by Step Instructions, coming soon.
What easy, stress-free, or eco-friendly crafts will you be doing this holiday season?
For my whole life I've been the one to decorate for Christmas (except for 2003 when I had Joseph one week before Christmas...and that tree had the New Year's decorations on it!) finally my kids are capable and WILLING to do it themselves, HALLELUJAH ! I keep reminding them, what you put up you must also take down and put away. I'm hoping to get away with just decorating the tables on Christmas eve.
What's your favorite part about decorating or decorations in general. (I love the monochromatic look)
Well...it's almost true, I did stress over the cleaning (why do people insist on living like slobs, we don't have a cleaning service!) rant over.
A big thanks to my in-laws, husband and daughters who did all the cooking (although we did make a grocery store run on Thanksgiving morning...no Macy's Day parade watching for us). Clean up after dinner was a breeze, most of the leftovers went home with the in-laws and starving daughter.
In fact we had enough wind for a little bit of musical entertainment after dinner. Tavien learned to blow a clarinet, Jonathan and Leah took turns on the cello and violin and Jerin strummed a few chords on the guitar...and oh yeah, Joseph gave strumming a harp a try.
No Black Friday shopping so that means I really saved money...kids really rather go on fun and exciting vacations...but maybe santa will bring them a little something.
To conclude, we were pretty much tradition free, and I'm okay with that, but please share with me some of your non-food related Thanksgiving Holiday traditions in the comment sections.
My goodness, the holidays are just rushing by. We've been extremely busy at the Sanford house and for the next week we will be reflecting on the past year, as well as focusing on the new year and how we can show more UBUNTU (humanity towards others).
No matter what your race, faith, creed, color or nationality, it would do us all some good to reflect on the principles of Kwanzaa over the next week. Just look up the principle of the day and discuss how you have demonstrated that principle in the past year or how you can live it out in the new year.
Kwanzaa Day #1 - UMOJA - unity
