Moon Dreams & Day Beams

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Last year someone gave Dad several books of Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions in tomfoolery. Once a humorist, he no longer understood jokes. The disease had exhausted the human luxury of comedy by December of last year. The friend’s “joke” made his, and our, day horribly miserable as he frisked, hunted, and rummaged in a witch-hunt perquisition for the book.  He was convinced his gift was purloined by someone amongst us.

All of this, despite the fact, all of the books were in the bag on his arm.

Dirty ol’ dementia. You make me angry.

Miss you Dad. Merry Christmas.

I mentioned that Brian and I are monograming. Actually, we are not mongraming. Instead, Holly at Life is Good is doing it for us.

Her work is amazing. She is non-commercial. She is a friend that I think A LOT of(most recently she organized the Griner Gang Memory Walk Team). Plus, we grew up in the same church, both with to UGA, we go to Kindermusik together, and lots of other stuff. I consider her artistry meaningful & homemade so she meets this year’s criteria. Don’t you think? 

If you have any monogramming that needs to be done visit Holly. Oh, and the tag . It is hers – with her Elle on it! It’s so cute and delicious, isn’t it!

We have been getting down to all the projects on our More Meaningful/Handmade Christmas List. I love giving homemade gifts but I must admit that it has been more time consuming than I imagined. With a toddler amongst us, Santa’s Workshop has to open and close shop more frequently then our pre-child days. We have been etching, wrapping, framing, copying, monogramming, and painting away. Christmas feels more like “Christmas” with fun projects. I have enjoyed spending the extra time with Brian, putting a little of ourselves into our gifts, and diverting my mind from gloomy things like how much I miss Dad.

happy paw-lidays from barry!

Merry Chick-mas.

Thank you, Rachel. Your enthusiasm for the project and expertise are phenominal.

We use our credit card like a bank account in effort to accrue points.  The interest rate is crazy high I assume. In fact, I have no idea since we don’t carry a balance on it.  It is worth the risk because you accumulate points for purchases; however, we pay it off each month to gain as many points as possible. I exchanged a few recent “mypoints” for a pottery barn gift certificate. It came in the mail today. Yay! It is my present to myself. Merry Christmas, Mama!

I have been exchanging points for over ten years with this same company as I love the free money. Typically, I exhange the points at Christmas to use on gifts for other people. But, this year is different. I will let you know what I use my free money for.

Merry Christmas, Me.

 *photo from flickr

Photo by Cindy

I hope you have a wonderful, happy winter week before Christmas. Ours is busy with parties and mailing cards atop our normal schedule. Is yours busy, too? Oh, if you are looking for homemade gift ideas then check out Steph’s comment.

Wishing you the best, Christy

One of the most cleverly-themed parties we have been to is a Christmas Pajama Party Play date hosted by H & J. The kids decorated homemade cookies, watched Rudolph, drank warm apple cider and hot cocoa, and played until their hearts content. Oh, and the Moms and Kids wore Christmas P.J.’s. I thought it was ingenious and adorable compared to the simple-free-fall type playdates that I typically host. “Wow, what a creative Mama,” I thought. Azure, you are awesome!

I have two regrets one is that B was not in better humor. With three teeth coming in she was cranky so we departed a little early.  The other is the night gown from Bellies and Babies faded. Oddly, the color evaporated in the places that were most used like the bottem and the sleeves. Perhaps, dulling is normal but not the first wear of the season. It had not even been washed.

Despite my puny annoyances of the day if you are looking for a cute theme for a kid’s play date, this is it.

Happy Birthday Little L.  Beatrice went to a Choo-Choo Train Birthday Party a few weeks ago. It was fun to celebrate in the park despite the rain and the cold front blowing through. Here are few pictures.
 

B loved  the balloons.

Beatrice and the honoree have a “special” relationship. He is all-boy and she is all-girl. They pick on one another. She screeches and cries. He taps, pinches and races by. You may think they would not enjoy each other, but in fact, they do. They even hugged one another bye one afternoon. In this picture he is blowing the toy in her face. Every time she would turn around to get angry it would have rolled back in. She was stumped. It was pretty funny.

This was our first personal gift-to-give of the season. It was for the Ornament Swap at the Kindermusik Christmas Party. It was fun to make as I hope the receiver loves it!

the chili cook off is cancelled. oh, what a bummer.

Image – Point Click Home

I love these pretty Christmas Treat Bags! Wouldn’t they look lovely on each plate on a Christmas table setting as placecards or even lots of them hanging off the Christmas Tree as decoration and then if you needed a last minute gift for someone you could just whip one off the tree!

via Absolutely Beautiful Things

i hope that my earlier post on our attempt to have a more-meaningful christmas made sense. i must explain that we are not trying to have a cost-free season. in fact, handmade gifts and well intentioned purchases cost equal or more than mass produced or mass promoted options. our goal is to glitter the festivities with love and substance in effort to appreciate our relationships and intangiable valuables – whether it cost a more or a less.  

so far, the experience has been great. brian stayed home from work and beatrice went to granny’s yesterday so that we could work on gifts. it was so much fun to spend time with “just him” doing, well frankly, anything. it was especially nice to initiate a project and make presents with him.

the first gift we have given was at tonight’s kindermusik christmas party ornament exchange. it is a simple, traditional, plain white ornament. kindermusik fall 2008 with a music note was painted on the front and back as red & white polka dots were spruced about the adornment (you can see it here). it was really fun to see the reaction on the people when they opened it. more, it felt really good to make something myself.

There is just something about Burl Ives. He just does it for me. He puts the jingle in Christmas while he gets me in the holiday mood. This song reminds me of “staying up late” to watch Rudolph. I looked forward to it year after year.

I hope you have an inspired weekend!

From Design Crush -  from d. sharp

Photo by Vanda Novodomszky

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.” - Lin Yutang

now, if i could only find a few useless afternoons. where are they

I love this old Lolly Jar and scoop available from Elements. I think this would make a gorgeous Christmas gift for a sweet tooth! One of my Auntie’s would love this for Christmas filled with all of her favorite chocolates…like dove bars!

the next generation of hulsey

photo from thanksgiving break

Christmas is about love and family, friendship and appreciation, and gratitude for all that God has given us. It is so much more than presents and parties to me. Yet, each year, society places greater focus on the commercialization of the holiday. The getting and giving, the huge sales, and the cost have become very powerful. Many businesses’s yearly profits are made strictly within this season. Christmas has become emotionally and financially stressful as divergence from the reason for the season becomes blurry. There are parts of it that I dread…and, hate. The more I lose touch with my roots and a meaningful, soulful Christmas, the more the holiday seems peculiar, odd and strange.

This year Brian and I have decided to focus on gifts, activities, and celebrations that cost little or no money, are handmade or that allow us an opportunity to return to the things that matter to us. We have discussed our sentiments for years. However, we always get caught up in the hoopla that starts out as fun and ends up un-rewarding for us.  

“This year, l want to do it,” Brian told me the other day. His confession is all that was needed to catalyze our first attempt at a special, meaningful holiday.

My fondest recollections are not fantastically, fancily wrapped. The are not from the fourth floor of Rich’s or the shelves of the Hen House. In fact, they are not even found on a single one of my annual wish lists. The memories I cherish most include long drives with rarely seen Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins to find the best decorated houses in South Georgia, sewing a cookie-filled mouse for a friend’s mother, making candles with my sister (heaven help you if you received one of those lovely fire hazards), searches down dirt roads and through fields of Berrien County for the best sticker-tree for ornating with gum drops with my Mother and Grandmother, the quiet of the alter-filled communion at Nashville United Methodist Church, the smell of the ginger bread cookies my Dad gave us each year, the off-tune sound of my mother, my sister and I singing to Christmas Carols blaring from a battery operated tape player in floor board, the taste of a homemade egg custard cake like only my granny could make, and the warmth from the down of my coat in the poorly heated ‘68 mustang my Mom drove each year to Nashville.  

These are the things that I hold dear. This is what I want to give Beatrice. I want her holiday to revolve around her relationships and our love rather than the PBK catalog or a retail flyer. I hope that Christmas strengthens our knowing of the world and the spirit around us, rather than weakening it or replacing it. 

As we attempt to scale back to the basics, I hope our friends and family know that the things we giving, getting and doing mean something to us. I also hope that as we reflect on the decisions of year’s past, that we are thankful that we did this. I hope it is a good decision.

Admittedly, we have challenged ourselves greatly. This is going to be hard for us. However, we are committed to trying.

Do you, too, wonder about what Christmas has become? Or, does it not bother you? Are Brian and I crazy? Have we gone off the deep end? Help. Seriously, tell us. Maybe we are just weird. Maybe your favorite gift is of something big and huge and great. Hmm…I hope we are considering all sides of the season as we embark on creating the traditions of our new little family.

*photo from flickr