Getting into the spirit of Christmas, cookies!

Well I certainly didn't meet all my goals for the week but what can you do. I haven't started my daughter's doll yet but will start that this weekend. I have been too busy packaging up items for my shop and sending them off before Christmas. I feel like Santa when I stumble into the post office with my bag of boxes!

On Tuesday my friend stopped by and "kidnapped" me on a trip to look for vintage ornaments at the local antique stores. I did feel a little guilty but picked up a few inexpensive ornaments that I love. These tiny colorful glass balls in their original packaging will be treasured at our house.



I also managed to make a batch of cookies for my children's writers group meeting and cookie swap.



Cardamom Almond Stamped Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks, 1/2 lb.) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cardamom seed
2 cups all purpose flour

Cream butter then add sugar and continue beating for another 2 minutes. Stir in the flavorings and salt. Add the flour and blend well.
Refrigerate the dough for 30-90 minutes in a covered container.
Form into 1" balls with your hands and place on lightly greased cookie sheets about 2" apart.
Oil and lightly flour a cookie stamp, press lightly into the dough to make the design. I didn't have a stamp so I used the bottom of a flat glass dipped in white sugar.
Bake cookies at 325°F for 9-12 minutes. They should be firm but not browned. Cool on cookie sheet for 2-3 minutes then transfer them to wire cooling racks.

They came out well and were very easy to make. I am going to look for a cookie stamp or ask my husband to carve one for me. I love the cardamom and almond combination. The recipe is from Scandinavian Cooking.

Most of my flag garlands are hung on the tree and I have a photo to share too!


And last afternoon/night we enjoyed a wonderful snow storm. The girls will be sure to be out this afternoon playing in it after school.

Getting into the spirit of Christmas - The Cards

Yesterday afternoon I finally started on our Christmas card project. My youngest had drawn a few pictures for me to use as ideas for our card. I scanned these into the computer and fixed up the drawing outlines a bit. Initially I was going to print the sketches for her to color but she had a friend visiting and they were outside having fun. At least I think they were having fun because they came inside with fingers that looked as close to frostbite as I have ever seen. Anyone who can ignore that kind of cold must have been having fun. So instead I used the Photoshop to "color" them in a bit.



We were going for simple and this worked out pretty well. The idea was to have a picture of our house and cut "flaps" in the bottom windows and door to open up and show school photos of the girls peeking through. I had to make my daughters windows a little bigger though for this to work but in Photoshop this was fairly easy.



We will add a little glitter to the front card to "sparkle" it up a bit too!

Getting into the spirit of Christmas, decorating the tree!

My husband always sets up the tree in the stand and wrestles with the tree lights (not an enviable job). Then we girls set about adding the decorations. The tree was tall enough that we needed to use a step ladder. We also secured the tree to the wall (with eye hooks on the window trim and fishing line) to avoid last year's Christmas catastrophe!


This year I am adding more flag garlands like the one hanging on this door.



Many years ago I inherited a small strand of very old paper American flags and have enjoyed setting them up at Christmas every year. Several years ago we made flags from around the world with cut paper. It was time consuming but we enjoyed these colorful garlands on our tree and draped on our lights and windows. But then I had the idea to scan the flags (into my computer) and make a few more. And that is what I am busy doing this year. I have set up the pages in photoshop so I can get many flags on each sheet of paper. I have printed them such that you fold them in the middle, glue and then have a two sided flag. The edges are not lined up perfectly (though close) -- I'm not a perfectionist.



Once I cut out the flags I fold each flag in the middle. I use thread but a thin ribbon would work well too and would be less likely to tangle. With a little white glue on one inside of the flag I then press the sides together with the thread (ribbon) inside at the fold. I try to space the flags evenly and just use a folded piece of paper as my "ruler".



These are the flag sheets that I made up in photoshop. Feel free to use this for your own garlands (but please do not sell them though) if you like them.























Our family happens to be American, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian, and a little Irish, and one of my daughter's is Chinese so I usually print more of these flags. Many of our family Christmas traditions are Norwegian since much of my family was from Norway. There are so many flags I certainly hope that no one feels left out if I didn't include their flag.

During dinner we lit our second advent candle and shared a few family thoughts -- some more thoughtful than others. But holding hands around the table in the quiet candlelight is a sweet moment.

Getting into the spirit of Christmas, the TREE!

This afternoon we drove out around 3pm up to a neighboring town to cut our tree. Everything looked so beautiful in the snow. And of course we found the perfect tree too!

Getting into the spirit of Christmas, the second step!

In reality I have skipped my first step (making our Christmas cards). But I'm not going to let that stop me from going forward. This weekend I promise will make an attempt at that project. I am going to continue our trend of using our children's artwork in combination with a few of their photos.

In the meantime I am continuing my small steps to the holidays. Every year I try a few new handmade decorations to get me in the spirit. I wanted to share one cute idea I had. Being a big collector of driftwood I thought this little card/note holder was a great idea. I had seen many wire holders but none using driftwood. If I had had more time I would have tried making some for my shop but that will have to wait until next year I suppose.



I also made a few more wire "curls" to place in my blue bottle collection in my kitchen "niches". Putting a used wine cork on the end and into the bottle helps them sit up better.





My daughter has a friend named "Annie Ootie". She is an adorable cloth doll in the Waldorf style. This Christmas my daughter wants a friend for her. So next week my plan is to start work on this friend. I think that Annie wants a little boy to be her friend. This time I promised to let my daughter see the process and have some say in the hair and eye color. I have a kit I purchased from Magic Cabin last year and some yarn for hair.

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

A quiet and thankful day

Thanksgiving was actually pretty relaxing. With out guests coming we woke up a bit later and enjoyed a nice breakfast. My husband cooked a duck dinner with scalloped potatoes and yummy carrots. Meanwhile we worked a little bit on straightening up the house (for our impending teenage birthday party with BOYS!). I put the clear glaze on the ceramic Christmas ornaments we made and finally had to clear my crafts off the table so we could enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner. I didn't even set up the table with a fabric table cloth (sigh) but it was simpler with kids just to enjoy dinner. My youngest was disappointed with the duck and complained and sulked a bit. She suddenly became a big turkey fan. But we loved it!

Friday morning was breakfast in bed for our teenager. Later that morning found me taking my daughter to the mall with her friend. I must be insane! I really try to avoid the mall whenever I can and Friday of all days to go! But the girls really had fun and I survived well enough. The first two items purchased never had their security tags removed. So since I was carrying them I basically beeped every alarm in the mall. Suddenly on the other side of the mall I realized that it was me. How embarrassing!

We were back for my business meeting with friends. We are in the process of setting up a local "store" and are just beginning our business plan. Everything is working well at this point with a few rough bumps along the way. But its a learning process!

They left close to 5pm. The plan was to head to the movies after dinner and cake but my husband kind of derailed that by making "fresh" pasta for our lasagna. He had a package of lasagna noodles from the store so I'm not sure the reasoning on this. In any case it was a rather stressful and frenzied rush out the door without cake. I am amazed at how much I dislike a change in plans sometimes. The handmade pasta under other circumstances would have been delightful but I just couldn't enjoy it. Well 60 seconds is not how long I intended to spend eating dinner.