End of the Year

I finally purchased a Christmas cactus. I've always wanted one - seeing them at the Walker the other day inspired me to take the plunge and see if I can keep one going:
I fell off the wagon as far as yarn purchases today - couldn't help myself. Sea Silk yarn in the hummingbird colorway. Delicious:
I needed a new coin purse - mine is falling apart. Today life was feeling very short so I was reckless with my Mall of America gift card:
Pink is not Kathy's favorite color, but I rather like it. This is something that I will use every day. The color and the bird make me smile. (Yes, Sweet Pea, it is).

Failing With Style

I was doing end of the year cleaning today and found these. Love the elephant.

Tropical Picnic

Girl-child suggested we have PBJ sandwiches beside the fish today for lunch.*
It was lovely.
A fun lunch the day before she's off to Chile for a few weeks.
She always makes her mark too.

*Back in the day when I was the mother of a three year old and a baby I used to go to the Walker Sculpture Garden to have a picnic lunch beside Frank Gehry's fish.

Snow

The latest snow was heavy; back-breakingly so. Luckily, Boy-child is good at shoveling:
Girl-child, in the meantime, started a snowman. She creates.
He likes to un-do:
The results are a clean sidewalk and a snowman:
Life is good.

Merry, Merry

I hope everyone had a good day today. I don't know how I forgot, but I have no snow photos. We got about 7 or 8 inches last night, more to come tonight. I'll try to remember to snap a few shots tomorrow.

Here's the tree this afternoon:
The kids getting along as always.
Note the ridiculous robot at the top.

Sorry girls, I never did get used to it.
Having fun with new (vintage) toys.
And looking forward to watching movies received.
We got good puzzles too, and books and pears...countless wonderful things.

Here are some angels - a kindergarten photo turned me into an angel, a felt covered cone with styrofoam head made when I was ? and other assorted celestial beings:
The snow storm provides quite the contrast from last year in Chile.

Oh The Weather Outside is ....

Wonderful!

We are due for 12-16 inches of snow over the next few days - I hope they're right!

Here's a vintage ornament - from my childhood...I was the only girl so there was a lot of pink:
This is either Toot or Puddle, I'm not sure which. We loved the books, especially the one in which one of them goes off on a trip and sends the other one postcards from around the world:
A glass angel and a cat ornament that looks just like our cat, Mozart. Suzie, who is currently taking care of Mozart as Girl-child is leaving soon for Chile and Boy-child is allergic, gave Mozart the ornament several years ago:
A very girly ornament that I received when I was too old for such, but it was made in Spain which I find endearing:

Where is Everybody?

Where are my friends? No one is blogging.* I wonder why?

Oh, right, it's Christmas this week.

I've had my own issues as the holiday bears down on me.

Disasters:

The top third of the tree has no lights. While trying to figure out the problem in order to fix it, I almost tipped the whole $#@&* thing over this afternoon.

The first round of oatmeal shortbread cookies could not be eaten by anyone with any type of dental work because the sprinkles used were new and very hard. Tooth-breakingly hard.

The first round of date balls were a catastophe. Not sure what happened but I'm blaming it on the dates.

I have not knit a single stitch today.

Boy-child is sick. Again.

Positives:

I made (microwave) fudge for the first time ever and it is, if I may say so myself, quite good.

The second round of date balls turned out. They are delicious, as always. (Auntie's recipe is THE BEST).

The children were happy with the first round of oatmeal shortbreads; every one of them has been eaten and a second batch made.

Girl-child is home. This is a very good thing because she keeps me from going over the edge (and throwing out the tree).

I am not doing any Christmas knitting; thank the gods.

To do:

Wrapping. All of it.

One more batch of spritz cookies.

Cleaning. Notice this is at the bottom of the list.

*My apologies to The Kat, who (pointed out in comments that she) has been blogging regularly (the only one). I forgot to mention her in my frenzy last night. Be sure to check out her links, especially the one to The Cat's House.

On Decorating the House for Christmas

(don't know where it was done, but I love the idea and the story is great)

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.

Urban

I have been cleaning out email at work this afternoon and found this from last month - just watched it today.

Thanks to Linda, who sent it with the title, "How This Whole Blonde Thing Got Started."

I remember this show; I guess it was a precursor to today's reality TV.

New Coat

Aren't new coats fun? We just picked this one up at the army surplus store on 1st Avenue North.

And then this week he was named "Best dressed" in the school yearbook

More Ornaments

Since I love maps and globes, this is a favorite of mine; a gift from an auntie some years ago:
These are a favorite Rat King and a favorite Clara from ballet days:


Knitters' Guild holiday party was last night, Book Club's party is tonight, the holiday cards are coming in, there's snow on the ground and while a lot of people grouse about the cold, I don't mind it too much. I think that putting up with the cold is well worth all the other things that come with the season.

Holiday Spirit with Stitches

The Nutcracker is big in our house. Both kids danced in the Ballet Minnesota production - Girl-child for eight years and Boy-child for, I think, six or seven. This is our favorite of all the nutcrackers we own (which is a lot) because it's Drosselmeyer. We call him Robert because Robert Cleary was a fantastic Drosselmeyer:
This is a recent ornament acquisition - a felted Santa from the Textile Center. I collected Santa ornaments for a while.
And I bought a lot of angels too, over the years.
Last night we had a little interruption to our regularly scheduled activities; Pato took a knife to his finger. Four stitches at the emergency room. We haven't been to the emergency room for a while and we noticed a lot of changes since our last visit. Turns out that since University Hospitals took over Fairview (our favorite part) Fairview has turned in to a bit of a mental hospital. That explains the heavy security. Anyway, they took good care of him (sans straight-jacket) and we got home within a reasonable amount of time.

Both kids were born at Fairview and it turns out they do still have OBGyn there. Must be a nice break for worn-out mental health workers to visit the babies.

(Kat - is that where Smokey is?)

Progress

I believe I mentioned that I finished my Wanida socks? I love Cookie A. sock patterns:
This past week I've been racing to make a peace offering for Boy-child's adviser at school. There was a little incident. Small. He hasn't flunked out or been expelled, we'll just say that the honeymoon is over. Anyway, I made this hat for the adviser and she's going to get it even tho I feel lukewarm about how it turned out. I like the trellis pattern:
But the decreases didn't go very well. After two attempts at making the pattern work for me I did my own thing. It is slightly misshapen, but I'm hoping blocking will take care of it - this gives an idea of the texture at the crown, the color is more accurate above:
On the Christmas front, I got my mother's cards done and most of my own. This shows where we were at last night - One pile ready to go, one waiting for the annual letter and/or international postage and a third pile waiting for the Spanish version of the letter (Pato's job; he is, after all, a professional). Most of them went out this afternoon:
There are five cards left in the box. I hope I didn't forget too many people.

Ornaments of the day - The "HoHoHo" is from 1991, when Girl-child was two and "hohoho" was how she expressed Christmas.
This is an antique - I believe it belonged to my great-grandmother Christopher:
Christopher from Christopherson - the Norwegian branch of the family, btw. That is why Boy-child's middle name is Christopher.

Finally a Real Snowstorm

There was snow this morning - about ten inches, I believe, over the last 24 hours. It was too treacherous this morning to take photos along the way, but there was this scene out my office window:
The honey on my desk looked particularly warm and sunny today:
And some day I'm going to bowl at the Student Center just for the $#@! of it:

Busy, Busy, Busy

We got a tree, ordered cards, decorated (actually, Girl-child did a lot of that).

It's pretty impossible to photograph a tree with lights in the dark, but you get the idea. The tree was purchased from the University Forestry Club - small and shapely and very reasonably priced:
Some favorite ornaments (sorry about the flash, Sweet Pea) ...

Thing One and Thing Two:
This is something Girl-child made in preschool, I think - small piece of felt, cotton ball stretched out, googly eyes and a mancala piece:
A Santa with a nose, but no eyes:
A sheep - Sue, I believe you're responsible for this?
Some old-fashioned and modern in the mix:
And cookies:
I made two batches of cookies so far, Boy-child helped prepare for sending my mother's cards and, would you believe, I finished the Wanida socks?

It's been especially fun since we weren't here last year. And best of all? It's supposed to start snowing tomorrow.