What a Life!

Today we’re talking about some of the best – and worst – ornaments on our Christmas tree.

When I went to take pictures of our holiday ornaments, this is the first one I took a picture of. Steve’s Aunt LaRhea gave it to us last year, and I just love it. It is so pretty and shiny. Whoever made it did a great job. And I love the handwriting! So pretty!

This is another keepsake ornament we have. It’s one of those collectible ornaments they sell at Hallmark or that other card store. Steve’s mom gave it to Ben for his first Christmas. I always enjoy hanging this one on our tree.

Every year our knitting guild has a Christmas ornament exchange as a part of our December meeting. I must confess, when it comes to tacky knitted things, holiday ornaments are high on my list. In fact, Steve has a number of them in his holiday ornament collection [his mom gave him the ones they used to put on their tree when he was a kid], and they are not allowed on our tree. So I always approach this holiday exchange with fear and trepidation.

But for every rule, there are exceptions. Every year, we’ve had some quite nice ornaments that people made up. And not just that – the last two years, I’ve been so lucky as to win the ornaments I liked best. Last year, Julie made the Santa Hat and I got it. I just love the shaping on that hat.

This year, I won this little stocking, made by the same person, using the same yarn. Again, my favorite from the entire stash when they all were on display at the end (though there were also others I would have loved taking home as well). Julie even posted the patterns (including what yarn she used) on her blog this year. I just love them!

I love Starbucks, so it was fitting when my sister-in-law gave this to me a year or two ago for Christmas. Commercial ornaments can really be tacky, but I think this one is rather nice. In fact, I had even admired it in the store, though I never would have bought such a thing. I enjoy having it on our tree, though.

Of course, no Christmas tree in Nebraska is complete without a Husker ornament. This one is rather nice, I think. I think Steve got this as a gift from his brother and sister-in-law in one of our recent Christmases.

Finally, this ornament has to be one of the most tacky ornaments I have ever seen. Steve insists on hanging it on our tree every year. In a prominent place. This year, it’s up at the top. It’s horribly ugly, and he won it for answering some trivia question about the Huskers (which is how he came by almost all of his Husker paraphernalia, I might add). I think next year, I’ll insist that it be hung down low where our boys can also enjoy it. They’re Husker fans, too, after all. Maybe then it will get broken. [God forgive me!]

I love Christmas trees. When I was a kid, once I was old enough to put it together, it became my job…perhaps because no one else had gotten around to putting it up yet. Our tree was one of those where it had the letters on the branches for each size. The A-branches were at the top of the tree and the F-branches were down at the bottom. I’ve always enjoyed assembling furniture, and my favorite part of sewing is assembling things, so maybe that had something to do with it, too.

My mother always had coordinating decorations for our tree. The garland coordinated with the balls, and if something wasn’t part of the set, it didn’t go on the tree. As a kid, we had blue and silver garland, with little plain silver balls and big blue balls that each were the same color but were decorated a little differently – some with sprinkles, others plain. Then we had a strand of white lights and a strand of blue lights. Or something like that.

I don’t know if my parents still have that tree or not. I know for years now they’ve had real trees. A number of years ago (back when I was single), I was there one year when they took the tree down. They live out in the country – kinda – as in, you can light a fire in your back yard if you want to. Dad drug the tree out back and we were all out there when he lit it. When that thing caught, it went up so fast we literally had to run backwards twenty feet it was so hot. That was the end of my desire to have a real tree in my house. They get needles everywhere too, which is a pain. We have wood floors so they would get tracked everywhere instead of just getting stuck in the carpet. Not my cup of tea.

I know a couple years when I was single I had a tree. A real one. I decorated it with stuff like popcorn and cranberries on a string. As in, cheap. I didn’t have money to spend on garland and decorations and all that. After Steve and I got married, we didn’t have a tree right away. We wanted one, and every year our plan was to pick one up after Christmas. But every time we went shopping after Christmas, they were always sold out of the ones we liked, and we weren’t going to spend money – no matter how good of a deal we were getting – on a tree we didn’t like. So one year we finally took the plunge shortly before Christmas, when they had started to discount them, and bought ourselves a pre-lit 7.5′ tree. It’s a very pretty tree, and I so love not having to string lights.

We still have never gone out and bought a herd of coordinated decorations for it. I did buy ribbon to use as garland one year, though I bought two rolls and I should have bought three, I think. Otherwise, we just use decorations Steve already had – his mom had given him the ones they had when he was a kid – in addition to other ones we’ve picked up here and there.

And really, I’m kind of anti-theme as far as the tree decorating thing. If you have all sorts of unique ornaments, you can put anything you want on your tree. Well, within reason. The boys tried putting Steve’s shoe in the tree this year, and I had them take it down. There’s also a little ball of wadded up yarn tails that somebody stuck up there. Not. my. doing. It’s right in my line of vision when I look at the tree, but only when I’m sitting on the couch. As of yet, I have been too lazy to stop what I’m doing to get up from the couch and take it down.

One of our Christmas traditions is to add a new ornament to our collection every year. Last year, it was a set of apple ornaments. Steve wanted to hang an apple on the tree, and I could only find apple ornaments in sets of six. Then usually we get ornaments as gifts, though none yet this year.

This year we put all of our ornaments on the top half of the tree so Joey couldn’t reach them. While in past years our tree has looked rather bare, this year, the top half of our tree looks great. It finally has enough ornaments to look nice. Perhaps I need to accelerate the building of our ornament collection so next year the entire tree can look as nice as the top half looks this year.

We still need a star at the top of our tree. Right now we use this snowflake ornament that is this handmade crocheted thing with lots of starch to make it flat and stiff. It just kinda sits somewhere at the top.

My tree skirt is a cheap silver tablecloth I picked up somewhere. It works as long as no one tries to climb under the tree, which seems to be a favorite game this year so it’s kind of wosheled right now. I’ve seen some neat knitting patterns for tree skirts, and that’s what I really want to have, but I have not gotten around to selecting one, and once I do that, I have to buy the yarn and knit it up. Maybe next year.

Tomorrow: pictures of some of our favorite ornaments.

Another one of my favorite parts of Christmas is baking holiday goodies.

What I managed to get around to making this year is completely shameful and embarrassing. Like I said, I got into the spirit of things late, I was busy with work stuff, and with two little children underfoot, I just didn’t get much done. But in times past, making holiday goodies has been one of the highlights.

When I was a kid, we always made sugar cookies. Mom would make the dough, then she, Traci and I would cut out the cookies with the many cookie cutters Mom had. Mom would bake them, being careful not to get them out of shape when transferring to the pan. Then she would make up some icing. We would pick which decorating tips we wanted with which colors, and then the three of us would decorate them together. Not only were they fun to decorate, they tasted really good too. This is one thing, though, that I have never really done on my own – it just isn’t the same doing it by myself.

I’ve always wanted to make a Gingerbread House, and I saw people making them this year on various blogs. One of the interesting tidbits was that they were using real glue – they said it works better than icing, and if you don’t eat the gingerbread house, why not? I think Ben would really enjoy watching me make one. It’s kind of like cake decorating though. My mother did really well at that, but I am not an artist and I am afraid my drawing skills – you know, being able to cut square pieces and carve shingles on the roof and all – would adversely affect not just the finished product but my enjoyment of the project as well. Someday, though, I shall find a recipe that looks easy enough to me and I’ll make one.

We made other cookies, too, when I was a kid. Peanut Blossoms. My mom had a recipe for fruit cookies – they were made with the same fruit used in fruitcake but tasted much, much better. They make a huge recipe, though, so if you’re making them for yourself (as I have done in the past), you need to make them once every four years or so or you’ll be really tired of them. My Grandma Hagele always made Date Pinwheels and Chocolate Caramels. [Now there is something I made this year: Chocolate Caramels – twice.] When we went to South Dakota for Christmas, Auntie Ann would make Caramel Popcorn. [I bought the ingredients for that this year, but still haven’t gotten around to making it.] I also love Fudge. The Christmas when Steve and I were dating, I made Truffles and gave them to everyone in nice tins as gifts (those were the days!).

When people talked about their Advent calendars [where you open up the item for that day and it gives you an activity to do so you do a little bit of celebrating every day] on various blogs this year, one of the things I thought I would include if I made one was baking cookies. My theory was to make one batch every week – that way I could rotate which kinds of cookies I made every year, and have enough to enjoy without being overwhelmed by holiday goodies. Ben loves watching me bake, so it is a way to celebrate the season that I could easily do with him (and possibly even Joey next year).

Next year I really want to make one of those Advent calendars, and one of the activities will be baking cookies – at least once a week. Another note to self…

I love Christmas concerts. In a way, it’s a part of the music thing. But concerts are even more special.

When I was a kid, of course, there was always the school Christmas program. We went to a school that had a very strong music program. In the early years, we just had the usual Christmas program, but as attendance grew and we were lucky enough to have kids that were musically talented as well as teachers who were devoted to teaching music (not just the school music teacher), we had our choir along with a school band and even a bell choir. In fact, we were good enough that the Christmas season meant performances – as in, more than just the school Christmas program.

There was Church Street Christmas up in Dade City. There was this street that had a lot of beautiful historic houses as well as a number of churches on it. The churches would have open houses and host concerts and various events during one week of December. Our school music teacher played the organ for one of the churches, and we always performed at that church on one of the evenings during that week. Afterwards, we would walk up and down Church Street and enjoy the sights and sounds of Christmas. Such fun!

There was always a big Christmas program at our church. Sometimes we even went down to Tampa and participated in the Christmas program of one of the churches down there. They had a [church] school that was larger than ours and which also had a strong music program, so joining them meant being a part of a much larger group. Oh, the wonder of it all!

In the years immediately after I graduated, our school choir even performed for local events such as the hospital Christmas program. The hospital Christmas program was a big event – they were known to bring in good entertainment for their employees, so our school choir performing at that event was quite a big deal. We were not your average school choir, though, so it was not a surprise that such invitations came about.

Such performances do not come about without a lot of hard work. We practiced months ahead of time, and then we had live practices, especially when we joined the group down in Tampa. All of that performing and traveling was big deal – and it was so much fun. Now when I go to concerts, I have an appreciation for what the performers have done to prepare for the performance.

I haven’t gotten to attend many Christmas concerts since I graduated from college. I did go to the White House Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony once when I lived in Maryland. But when I lived there, I was single and short on cash. Once I moved here, concerts like I was accustomed to weren’t a big priority to Steve. And then we had children. Attending concerts with small children is not my idea of fun. Either you have to keep the children up late if you take them with you or find a sitter, something which I am not good at since my mother-in-law moved to Colorado.

You can write me off as completely loopy if you want, but part of the fun of Christmas concerts is getting all dressed up for them. When I was a kid, occasionally Dad would buy tickets to a concert at Ruth Eckerd Hall to see people like James Galway and other classical musicians perform [during the year]. We always had to dress up in our nicest clothes when we attended those concerts, and I loved watching people and seeing the beautiful gowns many of the women would wear. Such fun! But alas! I married a man who hates to wear a suit and does it only for weddings and funerals. Maybe wearing a suit and attending a formal Christmas concert needs to be one of his obligatory gifts to me every year. I could start planning what I am going to wear now – a simple gown with a beautiful hand knit shawl over my shoulders. Ah!

I would love to see the Nutcracker. I would love to see the local orchestra perform. I would love to hear a brass ensemble do a Christmas performance. Even the local college Christmas programs would be wonderful. This year, though, I am lucky enough to have a video tape of my parents church Christmas program, with my parents and other people I know performing in it. I haven’t watched it yet, but I am so looking forward to it. For now, that will have to do.

Part of why I am doing this series is to leave myself a reminder for next year of the things I want to make sure I do. Attending a Christmas concert of some kind or another is high on my list. Christmas may be twelve months from now, but I can hardly wait.

There are many things that help create the atmosphere of Christmas during the holiday season. My favorite, though, has to be music.

You can take music with you anywhere. At home. In the car. While you’re working out. It keeps you in that holiday spirit.

While sacred music reminds you of the reason for the season, secular music reminds you of the many traditions that go along with the holidays. There’s everything from Silent Night to Frosty the Snowman to make you smile even when you’re performing the most mundane tasks.

It’s the hap-happiest season of all! Rightly so, Christmas music puts a smile on my face and makes me happy just because.

My husband [sometimes also known as Scrooge] says he doesn’t like Christmas music. Of the three radio stations he can tune into at work, two of them go to 100% music at the beginning of December, and by the end of the month, he can’t stand to hear another Christmas song. Quite frankly, I don’t blame him.

My favorite radio stations start out the season with a sprinkling of Christmas music and then keep playing more until they turn into 100% Christmas music around Christmas Eve.

I start out listening to classical music, which is what I listen to most often anyways, via public radio. Handel’s Messiah. The Nutcracker Suite. Classical arrangements of Christmas music – sung by a male chorus, a brass ensemble, a soprano, or one of my favorite orchestras. There is always a new arrangement, a new interpretation. I do not tire of classical music’s take on Christmas music. They even have jazz interpretations of Christmas music on Saturday night.

I also love modern classics like Bing Crosby and soundtracks from movies like White Christmas. When I was a kid, my dad had some multiple-artist Christmas records from the 60s that he would sometimes get out. I always loved listening to those records.

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, K-Love plays all Christmas music. It’s become a tradition at our house to have K-love playing in the background on those days – even when we have company. Mary, Did you know? and one of the renditions of O Come, O Come Emanuel are a couple of my favorites…songs that make me stop what I’m doing and just listen to the music for a moment.

We also have a tradition at our house of adding one holiday music collection to our CD library every year. Last year, it was Charlie Brown’s Christmas, one of Steve’s favorites. This year, it was the Hampton String Quartet’s What if Mozart Wrote Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas? I had a tape of that album when I was a kid, and I loved listening to it every year. The CD is no longer available in stores, but I found it on Amazon for way more than I have ever paid for a single CD – around $30. It was so worth it, though.

Generally I only listen to Christmas music in December, but I have a friend who occasionally gets it out during other parts of the year as well. I think part of what makes Christmas music so special is that you only hear it during one part of the year so it is something “new” to listen to for a while. It gives you a fresh take on life. And it’s part of what makes the season the hap-happiest season of all.

If I could only keep one of my favorite things about the Christmas season, it would be listening to Christmas music. I would be lost without Christmas music. The holidays simply would not be the same. Even though I do many of the same old things during December, somehow hearing Christmas music while I shop for groceries and such just does so much to keep that aura of the Christmas celebration with me.

To not listen to Christmas music at all until after Advent – as apparently some people do – would be unfathomable to me. You might as well celebrate Christmas at all if you’re going to do that. Oh my!

Christmas Day was always a family day at our house. Since we had already opened our gifts on Christmas Eve, we spent the day enjoying them. It was the one day a year where it was easy to get my Dad to sit down and play a game with us during the day. We often played games on Saturday nights, but he was always busy doing things during the day. Mom would join in sometimes, but she was often in the kitchen cooking, which she enjoyed. The whole day was like the ultimate Afterglow of Christmas. No more anticipation – just sheer enjoyment.

Here at our house, this year, we still have not opened gifts. Schon, Steve and I were up late last night just shooting the breeze. Schon delivers bread and has been working the midnight shift so his schedule is a little off – actually, he is still sleeping right now. Joey is also sleeping at the moment – taking his morning nap.

Last night, Ben was a wild-and-crazy man. He just would not settle down. We could hardly get him to eat supper. Finally, we did allow him to open one gift – his new flannel pants just like Daddy’s. They were a hit. Then we had him leave some goodies out for Santa and go to bed.

Yeah, go to bed. I finally ended up lying there with him just to get him to be quiet and settle down. He chattered non-stop. Steve was in the basement putting his toys away so there would be room for new ones – Ben heard some of the clatter and was sure it was Santa. I asked him which window he thought Santa would come in (since we don’t have a chimney) – he thought he would come through the window next to Joey’s bed. We were sure to be very quiet so we wouldn’t interrupt Santa and scare him away before he had a chance to leave Ben some toys.

Once I was sure Ben was asleep, I called the guys up and we set up the train. Unfortunately, Ben’s old Thomas the Train cars have a wheel-width that is about 1/8″ too narrow for the new track. [Why would they make it like that – more than one size of their trains?] Everything else is really neat, just as I expected it to be.

This morning, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and got the cinnamon rolls out. They didn’t rise fast enough in our winter-cool house yesterday for us to enjoy them with our chili. I turned on the oven and placed one pan of rolls on the stovetop, hoping it would be warm and encourage them to rise. I got the other pan of rolls out an hour later; by then the stovetop was warm and the second pan was ready to go in the oven when the first finished baking for a half hour. The gooey stuff went all over the place, but the rolls taste very good.

When Ben got up at 5:45, I was sitting on the couch with the camera set and ready to go. He checked the empty plate of goodies in passing and then headed over to the tree. He’s been playing with his new train set ever since, except for a short break to eat breakfast. Last night the boys could not leave the gifts alone – this morning, it is as though they don’t exist. I’m thinking setting up one toy on Christmas Eve might be more ingenious that I had realized.

I just downloaded 110 pictures from my camera – from last night and this morning. There are some real treasures in there. I so love my new lens.

The remainder of the day includes opening gifts (of course) and eating dinner. We’re having ham along with mashed sweet potatoes, jello, Horn Rolls, pumpkin pie, and the works.

Must go – Schon is up now so we have fun things to do and see!