Closer to Christmas

Here's a couple more cards I've made this Christmas, using up some of the hunter green card I seem to have a lot of. Although it's a classic for Christmas, and I used to use it all the time, I tend to go reach more for olive card with red these days. The Merry Christmas stamp on the first card is a cheap one, from a polymer pack from Riot Art & Craft, and the Lovely as a Tree stamp is a classic, and so beautiful.

The weeks are rushing by, just 16 days till Christmas now. I've written most of my cards but might need to make a few more, my card list has increased significantly with new families at church on top of adding my 40 or so colleagues at work last year and this.

Tonight I was at my staff Christmas party, which was lots of fun. I'm grateful to have been working two years with these lovely people. There are five more school days this year, plus another function and two long staff meetings, it will be strange to be with my work friends so much this week and then it will suddenly stop, I won't see them for six weeks. But ... we teachers all need a holiday!

Creating for Christmas

Since my uni semester finished in October, I've been busy making Christmas cards. This has been quite therapeutic in the midst of some difficult things going on in the family (and cheaper than therapy?)

I've made 100 cards so far, here's a sampling of some of them.

And now the fun part's over, I need to get writing!

Christmas Eve at Home

 

It's been a busy Christmas Eve here:

Baking
Wrapping

Roasting

Sewing (mending & adjusting for tomorrow)

Enjoying Christmas Eve dinner together

Singing carols

Merry Christmas, friends!

The last of the Christmas rush

Yesterday we put up our outside lights.

On Friday I put up my little Christmas tree in my craft room.

I love seeing it from outside.

Last week I finished my Christmas cards.

Which is quite a process. 

I've been making them for months.

In the last fortnight, I've addressed the envelopes,

stamped a greeting inside each card.

photographed them, and stamped the envelopes.

And of course, written in each one.

All 80 or so of them.

 

And yesterday I got the last of them in the mail.

Phew!

At last I'm feeling like I'm on the home stretch, we're over the hump.

Time to enjoy the tree, the carols, the sights and sounds of Christmas.

Perhaps some paleo Christmas treats,

a little Christmas shopping and wrapping.

Time to read the Christmas story in the bible and ponder on it.

School is finishing this week.

Relaxation is almost here!

I'm snatching more moments of it each day.

So many things ticked off for the year, with just a couple to go.

Now I just want to soak up the rest of December, 

before it too disappears.

Decorating every corner for Christmas

I love to decorate our study for Christmas. This is the room where I teach piano, and so it's nice to decorate for the sake of my students, but it's also the room with the lovely old sideboard and clock that belonged to Steve's grandparents, and it's a dark and cosy room. This year I've gone a bit over the top with old silver, china, urns, bells, baubles, pinecones  and fake pine branches 

(that have conveniently fallen off our ancient Christmas tree over the years). 

This is how the room was when I finished with it on Monday. 

Since then I've added and made a little more :-) perhaps to be seen in a later post.

Christmas Tree Lights - warm or cool white?

On Saturday night we came home from a family lunch, 

to put up the Christmas Tree.

But, oh no, one of the sets of tree lights didn't work!

I rushed out to Kmart to buy some new lights, because Saturday night

was the only good night to put up the tree for some time.

We've had our lights for quite a few years now, they are the old kind,

and of course the only lights to be found now are LED lights. Kmart only had

cool white lights, so I bought them and hoped for the best. 

The new lights are bright, and sparkly, but I was disappointed.

Our ornaments are red, gold, white and cream, and the very blue cool lights just weren't doing it for me.

I tried to be content with them. Because people all over the world are suffering all sorts of hardships and I'm fussing about Christmas tree lights.... but every time I looked at the tree, the lights bothered me.

So today I shopped again, in the daytime, this time at Target. Oh joy, I found warm white lights, 100 on a string, and on special! Tonight Emily and I extricated the cool white lights from under the hundreds of ornaments and beads (no easy task) and put the warm white ones on instead.

So much better (don't you think?)

And we've ended up with more lights, which I always wanted. The whole tree seems lighter.

The white of these lights ties in much better with our ornaments, and gives a sort of golden glow.

So I'm one happy girl.

Now I'm wondering what to do with the cool white light, perhaps something for outdoors or upstairs ...

I think they would be great with a blue or turquoise colour scheme, and with silver. 

Perhaps I'll even find a new home for them.

It's late here, and it's been a hot day. Christmas beetles are kamakazi-ing around the room.

It's just started to rain, quite heavily now. I've spent some of today making the house Christmassy, and the rest teaching and rehearsing music - my recorder class is playing at the school carols night tomorrow; I had some recorder and piano students come for lessons, and tonight I rehearsed with a cellist who I'm accompanying for an exam on Saturday. Tomorrow friends are coming for lunch. 

It's all good.

How has December begun for you?

(and what colour are your tree lights?)