silent night

it's a wrap

My house is an explosion of tissue paper and bows.

Happy wrapping, everyone!

misty watercolor memories

Perhaps a better title for this post would be, "How to torture your children and make them cry right before they get on the bus.....two days in a row."

But my blog design doesn't allow for lengthy titles, so we'll go the Streisand route.

Back in the day, I went through a brief black and white photograph hand tinting phase.

Which naturally led to a brief let's make our own Christmas card featuring our precious boys phase.

Before school one morning, we staged the perfect warm and loving scene, where-in we pretend that our grade school aged children are decorating our front entry with the help of our adorable toddler.

Totally believable scenario, yes?

We were in a rush, we only had a few minutes before the school bus came, and as a result, the first photo shoot involved both crying and threatening.

I cried, they threatened.

With high hopes that my children possessed the ability to repress traumatic memories, I ran with them to the school bus, glowing with the knowledge that my mission was accomplished.

"Have a wonderful day, boys! Mama loves you! And if your teacher asks you why you're crying, just tell her you fell down while you were getting off the bus! Mama loves you!"

This was going to be the best Christmas card in the history of the world. I just knew it.

I took the film to a one hour photo, and in the following one hour, they lost the negatives.

Awesome.

Never one to give up on a dream, the next morning we lovingly awakened our adorable children with the news that we would be repeating yesterday's fun-filled photo shoot.

Yay!

Having learned from the previous day's disaster, we bribed with ice cream and candy this time, (hence the gleeful look on my baby's face), and while some eyes may have been a little on the misty side, I don't think tears actually fell.


Awwwww. Doesn't that picture just warm your heart?

"Meeeeeem-ries, light the corners of my mind........
....misty water color meeeeem-ries, of the way we were."

"Scattered pictures, of the smiles we left behind.....
....smiles we gave to one an-uuuuuh-ther, for the way we were."

Have yourselves a Merry Pretend Happy Family Christmas Card day!

twas the week before christmas

* I am now officially a Christmas package mailer.

A stand in long lines, I really should have planned ahead, Christmas package mailer.

I've always been able to avoid the Christmas Post Office Experience until now.

I just shipped my overseas son's package to him last week. I have no hope that it will get there on time. If at all. He's had packages that never show up, and packages held up in customs for more than three weeks. Contrary to popular belief, chocolate chip cookies that have spent three weeks in customs don't taste all that great.

Notice that by slipping in disparaging comments about the customs office of a foreign country, and casting doubt on the reliability of the military mail system, you and I can just pretend that my late shipping date is in no way responsible if/when my boy's Christmas gifts don't make it there on time.

Oh, who am I kidding. I have officially flunked Military Mom 101. There's no getting around it.


* I still have a list of approximately forty five projects that I would like to make before Christmas. Right now, I'm smack in the middle of a glitter, scrapbook paper and pom pom fringe frenzy.

I love pom pom fringe more than I love life itself.

I also love glitter, but a teeny tiny bit less than I used to after I had to get out of bed last night to remove a piece of glitter from my eye.


* I also have plans to make salted caramels. I've never even tasted a salted caramel, but I've been obsessed with them forever. Years ago, when they became all the rage, I knew I'd love them. I'm a big fan of any salty/sweet combination, but I have yet to cross paths with a real, live salted caramel. I finally acquired some fleur de sel, so now the only thing standing in my way are the bad memories of pretty much every other candy making experience I've ever had. I blame my candy thermometer for the previous candy disasters.

I could buy a new one, but I kind of like having a scapegoat handy, and as you've seen from paragraph one of this post, blame casting is kind of a way of life for me.


So, how about you all?

Are you on top of things?

Or, like me, are you in a project, shopping, wrapping, baking frenzy?

Happy week before Christmas!

pretty in pink

Our little town has a once a month, anything goes sale at the local senior center.


The sale is organized by one of my favorite vintage dealers, and while her space is always fabulous, more often than not, the rest of the vendors are slightly less than fabulous.

You know what I mean. Don't make me spell it out.


But the November and December sales are usually a bit different. More spaces are filled, the vintage vendors come out of hiding, and I usually go home with a recycled plastic grocery sack or two of fun Christmas goodies.


This year was no exception, and my favorite find was a stash of reasonably priced, perfectly pink, vintage Christmas ornaments.

My shrieks of delight drew a crowd, - I've never had much of a poker face - so I then had to give the stink eye to anyone who even thought about being interested in my pink ornaments as I was hurriedly handing them over to the seller.

Back off, people. I saw them first.


Since I was taking them all, she ended up giving them to me for half price.

Deal of the day, for sure.

Have yourself a wonderful, slightly tarnished, vintage pink bauble kind of weekend!

merry christmas

christmas 2010 - part two

Let me start by saying that this post may be a bit on the all over the place side.

Brain = all over the place.

Post = all over the place.


I set out to photograph my Christmas decorations and very quickly realized that I had photographed every speck of Meadowbrook Christmas Cheer in great detail last year.

As there is not much new on the decor front for this year, (with the exception of the guest room), I resorted to a few new pictures that ended up being extremely heavy handed with the shallow depth of field, (most of the photo blurry with a small part in focus), and pretty darn heavy on the processing front as well.

Just a word of warning.

I was in a mood. Not a bad mood, just an extreme makeover photo edition mood. (See heavily processed and heavily staged, heavy on the out of focus Christmas cookie paraphernalia shot.)


The ribbon photo below is another perfect example of extreme, with a side of extreme thrown in for good measure.


But, I like it. At least for today. I may very well replace it at a later date and pretend this particular ribbon photo never happened.

It's been done before.

(Here are the links for last year's Christmas posts...click over to see more photos of my Christmas tree, my dining room, or if you're feeling ambitious, here is the link to all things under the Christmas label.


I'll now move on from obsessing over my photos to the real reason for this post....my son's visit and our family Christmas celebrations.


It was as perfect as it could possibly be. I loved having my oldest home for the week, and his girlfriend fit in just like she'd always belonged here. The week would not have been nearly as fun without her. We played games, ate, watched movies, ate, played lots and lots of ping pong, went out to eat, and came home and ate some more.

I gained four pounds in one week.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I went for a walk. I needed fresh air, and some type of movement other than the movement required to make some form of cream cheese infested food item, or the movement required to consume the cream cheese infested food item.

The fact that I used the word infested in the same sentence with my beloved cream cheese lets you know just how extreme the food situation was around here. We went through ten packages of cream cheese last week.

Dear Cream Cheese,
I hate your stinking guts. You make me vomit. You are the scum between my toes.
Love,
Alfalfa

(Sorry, that was one of many, many movie quotes heard repeatedly over the last week. We regularly communicate through movie quotes around here.)

Dear Cream Cheese,
I'm sorry. I don't hate you. I love you. I just think maybe we need a little time apart.
Love,
Teresa


The fellas set up a huge tent in our back yard, complete with a wood burning stove inside. The night of our Christmas party, all the guys went out to the tent and just hung out.

No chairs.

No lights.

Just standing in a dark tent, shooting the breeze.

With an awesome fire burning.

I chose to stay inside, and that's probably just as well because questions like, "why are we standing in a dark tent?", and "hey, did you know there's a real live house right over yonder?" probably would have have killed their tent buzz and that would just be sad.

I know my place and it's not in the tent.

It's in the kitchen with the cream cheese.


One quick non-Christmas note. Last week, I got a comment from a dear reader named Erin. Back in September, when I shared about my very favorite, very holey sweatshirt, Erin actually did an Ebay search to find me a replacement. Lo and behold, the exact hoodie in the right size popped up just last week. Erin sent me the link and before you could say "Why didn't I think of Ebay," Paypal and I had sealed the deal. My brand spanking new, mint condition, perfect shade of blue hoodie arrive safely just a few days ago.

Who. Would. Have. Thought.

I bought the original almost five years ago. Where has this one been all that time? I need to know.

Erin - if you read this, please email me!

Between my new blue hoodie, and my very first ever, extremely dreamy fleece hoodie, (a gift from our very special guest room occupant), I'm in hoodie heaven.



So, that's our Christmas in a nutshell. It will be a Christmas Eve church service for us, and we have a few gifts left to open on Christmas morning, so it's pretty smooth sailing from here on out.

Nine days to go, my friends. Are you ready?

christmas 2010 - part one

A text from my oldest yesterday afternoon...."Touchdown in God's Country. I need a lift".

Always one to oblige, I skedaddled to the airport to pick up my son and his adorable girlfriend. Poor things had to get up at one in the ayem to catch a train into New York to get their flight yesterday morning. Amazingly enough, they were up with the rest of us this morning. I was very impressed.


I'm pretty excited to have another girl in the house. I've been outnumbered for the last twenty three years, but for this week at least, the balance of power won't be quite so lopsided.


The infamous red dresser is tucked away in its new home. I'm hoping the fairy lights and the vintage Christmas tree take attention away from the fact that it takes a body builder to get the drawers open. They used to open and close like a dream, but I think the eight coats of paint I put on them had a detrimental effect on their smooth operation.



There are still a few large, blank walls in the guest room, but when in decorating doubt, just add more fairy lights and a couple cute baby pictures of your guest's boyfriend and you're good to go.




One final touch....I found these adorable Christmas Paper dolls at The Graphics Fairy.
Check out this site when you have at least four hours to get lost in all manner of vintage clip art goodness.


It looks like our week is off to a good start. Everyone has safely arrived, the kitchen is stocked and I had leftover Peanut Butter Pie for breakfast.


It's Christmas at Meadowbrook Farm.

i'll be home for christmas

December first?

December first.

It's December first.

I had such a jump on things this year, or at least I thought I had a jump on things, but as The Season is officially upon us, maybe not so much.

Our Christmas will be early this year. Really early. My oldest will be home on leave from the Coast Guard next week, so our Christmas dinner and gift opening will be December 7th, and our big friends and extended family Christmas Eve dinner will be on the 10th and all that, my friends, is right around the corner.

Dates don't matter much though, as long as the house is full of my people. I haven't seen my first born in over a year, and that's Just Wrong.

Dear Junior #1,
I can't wait to see you next week!
Love,
Ma

The decorating is about ninety percent done, the Christmas shopping is about sixty percent done, and the grocery shopping is about zero percent done. I've started the list and so far it covers the page front and back, double columned, single spaced. Food will be a focal point next week....we'll have prime rib, enchiladas, manicotti, soups, breads, salads and pies and cakes and cookies and on and on.

Cream cheese, butter and sour cream will reign supreme.

Sugar highs will rule the roost.

Carbohydrate comas will abound.

Yum.


This is the best.

Better than a tropical vacation.

Better than winning the lottery.

My whole family together.

Friends old and new.

A cozy house.

Snow in the forecast.

A kitchen that smells of casseroles and cookies.

Lots and lots of chaos.

Sounds perfect to me.

the best little christmas story

Rescued from the garbage after my youngest cleaned his room one day.

He also threw out all his precious kindergarten and preschool artwork. Thank goodness I checked the trash bag.

From his first grade journal....

Subject: Merea and Jofis
Date: 1-7-01
Merea and Jofis had a litl babea namd God
and ther wes a sno strm enen (and then) it stopt.

Love it.

The table is the last thing I have to show Christmas wise. Unless you want to see the "wrapping center" otherwise known as "all the paper products in Montana just exploded all over my house". I won't bother with a photo, as I'm pretty sure many of you have your own version of that beauty going on at your own house.

Several years ago, Martha Stewart via K-mart actually had Christmas linens in my dining room colors. Score! I still can't believe I didn't stock up better at the after Christmas sale.



Speaking of Martha, I'm not sure if she and K-mart are having a spat, but she has an extremely limited section of Christmas decorations this year, and absolutely nothing in the home goods department. Jaclyn Smith seems to be taking over. And while Jaclyn was by far the prettiest Charlie's Angel, she is no Martha Stewart when it comes to cheap imported Christmas wares.



Dear Martha Stewart Everyday....
Please work out whatever issues are affecting your inventory levels at K-mart. I need at least three and preferably four full aisles of your product, or it just isn't Christmas. As an alternative, you could potentially consider hooking up with another peddler of all things cheap Christmas. I'm not picky, I just need access to you and your wares in an inexpensive, big box setting.
Sincerely looking forward to your quick attention to this matter,
Teresa



Christmas Eve is at our house with friends and family, then just us and pajamas all Christmas Day. My hubby is allowed to get dressed to feed the cows, then has to get back into uniform as soon as he's done.

I'm planning to enjoy, not stress over, the next couple days. There's a lot to be done, but none of it really matters.

What matters is the litl babea Merea and Jofis had.

And why he came.

This year, I'm going to remember what Christmas is really all about.

oh christmas tree

Old glass bead garland.....



Pretty indents....


Snowy scenes...


Flocking, glitter, and I'm not quite sure how to describe the gourd-like funny shaped little guy bottom right. But I like him.


Toppers....none of which reside on my tree. My fake tree has a very flat top. Not quite sure what to do about it. It's naked for now.


I break one almost every year. This year, this gorgeous one fell off my china cupboard as I was moving everything around to take more photo's. I watched it fall in slow motion, but my hands were full. My first photography casualty.


Rest in peace (or should I say pieces) my Shiny Brite friend.

frosty

Snowmen.

Snowmen are adorable and heartwarming. Snowmen make you smile. Snowmen don't have to be put away after Christmas. Occasionally, snowmen are appropriate in my neck of the woods until June. I love my snowman collection. Many are gifts, and that makes them even more special to me.

Years ago, my boys made the block snowmen that sit on the mudroom porch shelf.


Most of the rest of my collection sits just inside the mudroom door.



Another snowman family lives in the dining room.




A few more dining room odds and ends....


Santa and these ornaments are all I have in my kitchen for decoration.


Most of my Christmas decor is in my dining room, but I have a few touches in the family room as well. Many of these things end up as centerpieces for tables on Christmas Eve.


My niece got me hooked on mosaic (is that the correct term?) candle holders. She has them in all colors, for all seasons, and they are so pretty with a candle burning inside. I want to learn to make them. Has anybody done it?


This little angel is one of my very favorite pieces. I think it came from my grandmother. Correct me if I'm wrong, mom!


Up next...the tree.