Category Archives: Christmas

Thanksgiving Weekend Part II

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.

And here’s little miss Sugar modeling her new Christmas set in the same color combination.

That’s all for now. We have a busy day today and also hope to get our tree decorated. Thanks for reading and I hope you all enjoy the weekend.

“Santa’s Helper”

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It’s been many years since I’ve made anything new for my Kish Riley, but she finally has something new to show you. This ensemble came about by accident. If you remember, I made the Santa hat (that is now Riley’s) thinking it was for one of the tiny dolls, but I was mistakenly following the pattern for Gina (the pages were next to each other in my book). Because I was using a thinner yarn on smaller needles it came out too small for Gina with way too many stitches for the tinies. Well, it fit Riley perfectly and was the beginning of this ensemble for her. This is her first sweater dress; it took two tries to get the perfect fit, but it was worth the effort, I think.

Look at those rosy cheeks on little Riley! Oh, I’ve missed dressing her!

I just LOVE embroidered sweater dresses on dolls, don’t you?

Here is the photo of my four dolls in their coordinating outfits that I showed you a couple of weeks ago. Like I had said in a previous post, I didn’t plan on making four sets that looked so sweet all together. It was a pleasant surprise!

Riley is my last doll to show you her little ensemble; I think she felt a little bad because she is last. I told her that I am saving the best for last which made her feel oh, so special.