Monthly Archives: November 2015

“A Cozy White Christmas”

My Kish Alisha (an 8″ bent leg baby) has a new Christmas ensemble to show you. It is made to coordinate with the last four winter white sets that I made for the Little Darlings, Riley, Pukipuki, and Amelia Thimble. Here’s a photo of those four sets. Unfortunately these four sets have moved on to dress their new girls for Christmas, so I cannot take a group shot of the five of them all together. You can use your imagination to place Alisha in this photo.

I love Alisha in headbands; they really show off her super soft, curly, reddish-brown mohair wig, so no Santa hat for Alisha. Instead I hand crafted a delicate headband out of English lace that I hand dyed to a bright red.

I made this dress full enough, so that Alisha can sit as well as stand in it. Alisha may take her first steps this Christmas.

For more information on Alisha’s “A Cozy White Christmas”, please visit my “Shop What’s New” page at cindyricedesigns.com.

Thanksgiving Weekend Part II

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We finished decorating our tree today, Sunday, and it is so cozy and sparkly in our family room now; with a fire going in the fireplace it is the best room in the house.

Friday night we got the tree placed right where we wanted it; we released it from its wrapping, added lots of water to the stand, and then let it “rest” all night. Actually, we needed to rest, not the tree.

We like our Christmas trees to be filled with all kinds of ornaments; each one holding a special memory or two. There isn’t any room for garland or tinsel on our trees, and that’s okay with us. It may look like a mass of ornaments to you, but it represents decades of wonderful memories to us.

I may be able to dress dolls, but I cannot dress a window if my life depended on it, so please don’t judge my windows. They’ve been like this since we’ve moved in. (How embarrassing!) I think I should ask Santa to send me someone to help dress my windows.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week!

Bye for now!

Thanksgiving Weekend Part I

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We had a very nice, relaxing Thanksgiving Day at home. My husband (and daughter) ended up doing most of the cooking. I put together the green bean casserole and was in charge of washing the dishes. I’d say I got off easy this year. While my husband was busy in the kitchen I was working on blog posts, photo taking, knitting, embroidering, catching glimpses of the Macy’s parade rebroadcast on television, and other little things that came up. Sitting around doing nothing makes me so tired, so I am always busy, but cooking is not my favorite thing to do; I’d much rather clean up.

We had pretty traditional dishes for our dinner: candied sweet potatoes (my husband’s first time making them and they were much better than mine), stuffing, turkey breast, green bean casserole, rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, sparking grape juice, and a vegan pumpkin pie (very good). Needless to say, we all ate too much. Today, Saturday, we still have lots of leftovers except for the green bean casserole. Since we have ingredients for another one I will put one in the oven today.

Something that we’ve been doing for many years now is to go to a Christmas tree farm on the day after Thanksgiving. We have two small farms within minutes of our house, but in the last six years or so we have been opting for the full Christmas tree farm experience and drive a little further to see more varieties of trees, get a fun tractor ride, eat homemade donuts, fudge, browse the ornaments in their heated barn, etc.

Weather-wise it wasn’t the best day: cold, windy, EXTREMELY muddy (cars were getting stuck in the mud), cloudy; but we got our fraser fir tree. The needles aren’t too sharp on this variety, so it’s a nicer experience putting the lights on, which my husband is doing right now.

We brought along our chihuahua. This little girl loved him; I thought it was so cute. Even though he had his parka (the only clothing he will tolerate) on, I think he was cold. He has very little fur on his belly and the tiniest paws that get cold so quickly.

These trees were the variety we looked at first; they were beautiful and old-fashioned looking, but the needles were too sharp. There were lots of these in the field, so maybe others thought the same thing.

The birds and (greedy) squirrels were very busy at the feeder yesterday morning. I caught some photos of the birds through the window. You can see some in mid flight. This morning the feeder is completely empty and so is our bird seed pantry. Time to go shopping…

You can see many pairs of cardinals in this photo. The red birds are the males and the neutral colored ones sitting next to them are the females.

I quickly snapped a photo of Amelia’s new Christmas dress. Don’t you love these blown glass Christmas trees? I picked them up at our church’s rummage sale this past June.