Folded Paper Tree

The first ever folded paper project that I saw was too many years ago when one of my elementary school classes did a project using two Reader's Digest magazines that we folded, stuck back to back,  then spray painted black to make something really pathetic for our mothers. I hadn't thought of it for years until last year when Woman's Day magazine had paper trees like the photo on the left in one of their holiday issues. I followed their instructions to make this one out of two phone books. Their version looked good--mine--not so much, but it was a relaxing project that I could do with my hands while my mind visited other places.

Christmas Baking 2012

The photo on the left shows a sample of some of our baking and candy making this year that we used for Christmas gifts to family, friends, and a few neighbors. We truly enjoyed making all of it and the fun part was  getting to try  some new recipes that I think turned out decent.The only thing I really didn't like was the white chocolate dipped pretzels (not shown). We used Baker's white chocolate and it tasted awful. I could pick out a  strong and distinctly powered milk taste in that chocolate. Unfortunately, I didn't do a taste test of those things before packing the Christmas gift sets, because it never occurred to me that white chocolate could ever taste bad. But this stuff did-- big time! But I thank the Lord everything else was good. 

Our homemade candy and cookie list for 2012:
Wilton sugar cookie cutouts, lady fingers,chocolate samoas, chocolate spritz cookies, white chocolate dipped pretzels, cream-filled chocolate covered cherries, strawberry jelly rolls, and banana taffy.

Learning to make the cream-filled  chocolate covered cherries, the chocolate somoas, and the banana taffy was new for me this  year. About the only candy I'd ever attempted to make was the super easy boiled  chocolate oatmeal candy. I was always just a little afraid to try candy recipes. But  the level of difficulty of these treats proved to be not even close to the impossible  ordeal  I  had imagined it to be.

Cut Glass Vignette

There's no real reason for this pic other than the fact that I just love cut-glass novelties. Not completely shown in the pic is a cut-glass hurricane lamp in the background and this cut-glass candy dish in the foreground.

Centerpiece 2012

We did nothing elaborate with the table this year, but I always love the white tablecloths. Just about anything you stick on a white tablecloth looks good to me, within reason, of course. The stick deer in the photo are part of a fairly large collection that my mother made from oak limbs. She loves to make them and they are a cute addition to our primitive Christmas decorations.

Christmas Table

Candy and Christmas just go together. I've always loved peppermint stripes at Christmas and found a way to incorporate them into our tablescape this year without purchasing a new tablecloth. We had this round glass table topper for a side table in storage which I drug  out and  cut a matching circle out of heavy-duty Christmas wrapping paper. We dropped the glass topper on top of the paper in the table's center and piled on the candies, candle, and picks.

Christmas Table 2011

We removed the extension from our oval table to have a round table this year. I arranged the stuff and my mother made the table cloths and chair drapes. On the white round topper, she applied hand made crocheted edging that took her quite a few hours to make.

For Santa

This photo of cookies and milk for Santa was inspired by a Christmas card I saw and I just had to do it. I'm thinking it's better to photograph this stuff than it is to eat it.


I made the spritz Christmas trees and the chocolate thingamajiggies while my mother made the lady fingers.  

Let It Snow

Each year in early November, we drag out, dust off, and crank up the Christmas music sound tracks and have Andy Williams and Mannheim Steamroller send us decking our halls. We start early so we can take our time and enjoy the whole experience; plus, we need to be finished by Thanksgiving if we plan to have any Christmas parties.  That's what we are doing now and that's what had me wanting to try digital scrap booking again, too. While under the influence of all that Christmas music, the song "Let It Snow" stuck in my head as a good one to scrap if I could temporarily feign non-existent the South Georgia eighty degree real world temp.

The thing about digital scrap booking that is whipping my butt is allowing some negative space on the page. I tend to pack all my pages so full of junk they just look like a collage. Gotta get a grip on that.

The Nutcracker Suite

For years my mother has enjoyed collecting nutcrackers for holiday decorating; this shot features just a few that she displays each year.

During the holidays, I really enjoyed using the night mode feature of the Olympus SP 565 UZ. That was the setting I used for this scene as well as most of my Christmas light scenes.

Christmas Tablescape 11

Our 2011 tablescape  was a very impromptu arrangement. However, before I go on I must quickly interject that I don't think , heretofore, the word “impromptu” and I have ever shared the same galaxy, let alone the same sentence or paragraph.  Normally, I have to and love to plot and plan things, extensively.  But there simply was no cerebral prodding required here. When we completed all the other decorating, we had not agreed upon a centerpiece for the table, and we had not found a place for the mirror, reindeer, cookie jar, poinsettias,  and the winter wonderland twigs. Wallah! The unknown variable in our Christmas centerpiece equation was solved when we shoved all the left behinds to the center of the table. Entirely too easy.

Christmas Party Tablescape 10 / For Tuesday Lunch Bunch Party

We arranged this tablescape for the central table used for the Tuesday Lunch Bunch party we hosted in 2010. 


Our menu consisted of a potato bar served with  an assortment of toppings that included butter,  chili, green onions, sour cream,  cheese sauce, and smoked Boston butt barbecue. For appetizers, we prepared finger sandwiches; Santa Fe' wraps; roasted bacon-wrapped water chestnuts (moose balls); pigs-in-blankets; and party picks stacked with cheese, olives and pepperoni.  For the beverage, we prepared a lime sherbet punch.

Several guests brought additional holiday dishes to share.

After our meal, we played a simple  Christmas word game in which  the hostess (that would be me) wrote  scrambled holiday words on a dry erase board. For each scrambled word, all contestants were given the same clue to solve it. The first person to  successfully unscramble each set of letters and form the right Christmas word won. Each winner then went to the Christmas tree to pick out the prize of their choice from a large selection of wrapped gifts.  Gift prizes were wrapped, inexpensive dollar store items that included the beloved rubber chicken, won by Carroll this time. 

Christmas Tree Closeup

Christmas Past

I wanted to try a digital scrapbook page to honor my mother for all that she does to make Christmas special. The people in these old photos are my parents, my sister, and me.

Even though cash was scarce during my parents’ marriage, my mother was a great manager and she worked the whole year through for us to have wonderful Christmases. She would start in January and go until December tucking away everything she could sacrifice to buy and make with her hands so my sister and I could be thrilled with the experience of receiving and opening a bunch of gifts.  

One of the ways she made Christmas so exciting for us was by allowing us to open presents in the wee hours of Christmas morning immediately after Santa left (my sister was the deliriously excitable insomniac who knew the exact moment that was). As the days of our  childhood stretched into adulthood, the tradition of watching and waiting an exact moment to open presents changed only slightly. Now, we spend Christmas Eve waiting for the stroke of midnight to announce the arrival of Christmas day as our designated time to share our treasures and  thank each Giver.