Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Okay, here's a quick catch-up post before we go into "new baby mode". Monday is Induction Day (a week past the due date), so if all goes well we will soon be posting about our new little arrival.

Christmas was low key and lovely this year, if not a little more time conscious. We sojourned to the woods and cut down a tree.






We baked some cookies and managed to deliver some before they were eaten and or went stale.





We spent the Saturday before Christmas up in Medford doing some back to back shopping while hiding gifts from each other in the back of the car. We read our Christmas books. We had a very fun box of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" anonymously left on our doorstep that delighted the kids every morning for 12 days. We still don't know who left it for us but thank you thank you if you happen to read this post! We managed to get some last minute cards out but of course not to our whole list. Next year...

We did our Christmas Eve tradition of re-enacting The Nativity Story from Luke 2, but it might've been our poorest attempt to date since Linnea wanted nothing to do with it. Daddy made a very fun "donkey ride" though.






And we opened our Christmas Bell. This too was a feeble attempt to keep up the tradition. In vain I explored gift shoppes and antique stores in search of a metal bell. I should've resorted to e-Bay sooner. Matt managed to find a copper fishing bell at Rite-Aid. So that's what we opened. But I also ordered two from a seller on e-Bay for future Christmases so we won't be stumped again!



We managed to hang our stockings a little better this year. We have this huge brick fireplace wall, but no mantle. I found some random hooks from the garage that we kind of wedged/hooked on the "lovely" brass fireplace door. It worked. Santa found them just fine. Though Henry was a little concerned that Santa would bump the stockings when he came through the chimney. Oh, and that Jadie Cat would drink the milk, so we had to cover it with plastic wrap! It was very magical as far as Santa went; especially thanks to the Portable North Pole PNP link that Grammum sent us...



I had fun wrapping gifts in fabric again. Furoshiki is the traditional Japanese technique for this, but it's something my mom has done for years and I've just evolved it into using square cuts or combining it with sheer fabric over paper in some instances. I love it. There's something about using real bows and ribbon and pretty Christmas fabric that I find pleasure in. Plus you don't have piles of paper and tape to worry about: just fold and store for next year.



Enough cutting and pasting. Here's the remainder of the photos in slideshow format.




Now that all the gifts have been given, I can post some pics of the few handmade things I did. And since my box to Hawaii, sent the week before Christmas via Priority Mail, only just arrived yesterday I could use that as my excuse as to why I haven't blogged about the holidays, but really I just haven't gotten around to it! (see photos in above slideshow)


We had our lights and decorations up Thanksgiving weekend and down the day after Christmas. The weather was nice that day even though we usually leave them up til New Years. Our tree was undecorated and out the door as well. The result was we've had a week of very low key relaxing just cleaning house and waiting for the baby... We even got enough snow for the kids and daddy to build a snowman.



There we go. My last act of nesting before the baby comes: my blog is mostly up to date. Yay! Thank you to everyone who helped make our Christmas magical and memorable.