Getting into the spirit of Christmas, the first step!

I have been so busy finishing up my custom orders that I have had little time to start preparing my house for Christmas. My youngest reminds me of this fact nearly every day now. I have promised that we will cut down our tree this weekend and in the mean time I have carried down all the boxes of ornaments for her to see. We set up our wooden creche set last night. We started making this when she was very young or maybe even before she was born. The stable now needs a little repair on the moss.


We originally intended to paint each of the wooden characters but even though we added characters every year we never had time to paint them. Now I just like the natural wood where I can see how the little fingers have loved them.

I cleared the top of this cabinet for our display of cloth dolls depicting the manger seen. I made these when my oldest was about 4 years old. The little tin angels to the side are from my grandmother. They have little cork heads and I am sure that the metal was recycled from food cans. They are really quite cute.



The small cloth angels on the left are for each of my children. Two of them have a violin and cello like my daughters. My youngest reminded me that her angel now needs a violin too.

We also unearthed a little tea set that I had hand glazed for my daughter. I was so surprised to see it since being concerned about the lead issues in toys made in China I was considering retiring some of their tea sets. I spent hours and hours hand painting this so I cant believe that I forgot its existence. Anyway at 8:35 pm I was seated at the table enjoying a nice little tea party with my youngest. She was beaming and said we should do this more often. How true!



Let me share a few of the birds I have been working on lately