A Tree of Great Sentiment

Last week during Gemma's birthday party, John went out to the garden bed and chopped down our Christmas tree.  :)

It was the neighbor to the tree we chopped down two years ago. At that time, it was only waist-high.  Now, it stands probably close to eight feet high in our living room!  I can only imagine how it would have looked if we'd left it growing.  (It does seem odd to plant such a tree in a raised bed amid small bushes!)

So, once again, we have a happily real (and free!) Christmas tree in our living room.  With Gemma's birth last year, I didn't decorate at all.  The church sent poinsettias which I lovingly gazed upon while nursing my newborn, and we traveled to New York for Christmas itself.  

This tree is unabashedly wild.  :)  Somewhat bare and scrawny, it is nevertheless no longer the first Christmas tree of a couple of newlyweds.  Then, we merely stuck our tree in a flower pot of dirt and dangled it with decorated cookies, but this year I actually bought a tree stand at Target.  It is so scrawny that only the innermost branches are strong enough to hold our growing collection of ornaments!  So many people love us . . . Gemma has at least three ornaments of her own already, and we have about as many couple/family ornaments joining the gorgeous Lenox and Wedgewood pieces my Mom-in-law has divded up among her daughters-in-law.

 This one will always be one of my favorites, though, because John gave it to me at that first Christmas.  The person in the mall who sold it even put our intials on the snowman and woman's mittens.  :)

And there are a few of those cookie ornaments which I coated with nail polish and saved. The most precious is this little heart, on which I piped "Our Baby," only a couple of days after we learned that our first baby was lost.

There's the upstairs tree, too.  It's a little tree I bought at a garage sale during my college years.  It has traveled through life with me from dorm room to teacher's desk to the sewing machine in the window of our first home, and it makes me happy.

So, these are our trees this year . . . both capitalizing on sentiment, like sentimental me.  :)

Gemma's Birthday, Part 2!

 

It's fair to say that Gemma liked her birthday cupcake!  

By the end of it all, she had blackberry juice all over her outfit.  I'm so glad that boiling water took it right out! 

 She also liked using her old-fashioned high chair for the first time, although the tray didn't last long.

She was a little more interested in the wrapping paper than the presents themselves . . . until she finally got them open.  She honestly did open about two of those presents all by herself, but we a more experienced little friend help with the others, for the sake of time.  We sent our friends home with felt bird ornaments from Michael's for their Christmas trees.  :)

Birthday Party #1!

Yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day, which meant that our little one was turning 1!  Though we plan to have a party with all the grandparents closer to Christmas, a week ago, we decided to throw together a little party on her actual birthday, and I'm so glad that we did. 

I started by taking some pictures of Gemma outside and designing an invitation to e-mail to her little friends. 

With some input, we planned a simple lunch menu of potato soup, almond-butter sandwiches cut into Christmas tree shapes, carrot sticks for the big people and fruit purees for the little people, hot cranberry cider (from Trader Joe's) . . .

 . . . And, of course, cupcakes! 

 I wanted to be a little healthy, so I made carrot cupcakes (from the Moosewood Cookbook) and topped each one with cream cheese frosting and a blackberry. 

If you squint, you can see the candle impaled through the blackberry in the cupcake on the right!

We also decorated a little bit.  :)

 

Grammy Reid found Gemma this perfect little bib second-hand somewhere!

The birthday girl herself was all ready in her tutu leggings, a top from Aunt Heidi, and pigtails.  :)

 Let the party begin!  More tomorrow!

On Making Things

When my mother and I were talking on the phone recently about the things we had made, we discovered something that I must have inherited from her, either by nature or nurture.  :)  We are both arguably at our happiest when we are making things, especially when we're making something new.  She had just made tiramisu and a new, different kind of soap.  I had just made wreaths and this little nest.  :)

We have lots of bridal and baby showers at our large-ish church, and for our most recent baby shower, I volunteered to bring the corsage. When the coordinator asked if I could make something, I was excited . . . and started pinning ideas . . .

 

Source: whimsicalways.blogspot.com via Gretchen on Pinterest

This was my favorite of the DIY corsages I found, and so, walking around Michael's with a web page on my iPhone opened up to the very helpful instructions, I picked up the necessary materials.

Only, I couldn't find the right size egg, so I ended up sketching an egg shape on a piece of felt, putting a running stitch around the edge, pulling it tight and stuffing it with three cotton balls.  I also added some silk violets. 

Isn't it sweet?  And I think the expecting mom liked it to, because she was still wearing it on her jacket at church the next day . . . :)

O, the Holly and the Rosemary

Thanksgiving came and went without me expressing publicly my gratitude for many other things . . . our home, our church family, our Savior, and my arms, to name a few.  I probably would have never thought to thank God for the use of my hands until this year. 

But now it's December!  It's time to put away the few autumnal decorations (which I never shared with you!) and decorate for Christmas!

Years ago, I remember admiring a little hand-twisted wreath in the window of one of my great aunt's apartments.  This year, I wanted to hang wreaths in all four of our dining room windows.  :)

So, when we were in NY for Thanksgiving, my dad cut down a big piece of grape vine, and, with Gemma on my back, I started twisting.  The first couple of trials failed, but the next four were satisfactory.  :)

And then, when we got home, I gave our holly bushes a hair cut . . . and our rosemary a haircut . . .

 . . . And with some time, and a bit of ribbon leftover from our wedding, we had four beautiful wreaths to hang in the window!

 I love them.  I love the old-fashioned feel our dining room has.  I love that they were free and that they're made of real materials.  I love that they represent the swamps and forests of my former home and our current home on Cottage Lane.  :)

There were enough leftover holly trimmings to make a little Christmas centerpiece from a crystal bowl full of oranges . . .

 . . . and to spruce up the mantel for Christmas . . .

Soon comes the tree . . . :)