Decking the Halls!

One reason I like to blog is that it helps me remember events – in fact the act of blogging seems to cement the memory in my mind a bit, and it sure is fun to look back at past events in some sort of organized fashion, rather than looking through a folder of pix on my hard drive! This holiday season I’ve tried to make sure and do holiday “stuff” with my boys, not letting my studio tour, finals at the University, etc… get in the way of holiday preparations. We had a lot of fun decorating the house this year, and I wanted to share that here, although it’s from weeks ago!

Finding “The Tree”

There’s a Christmas tree place in the next town over that has lots of trees (already cut) displayed all opened up, so you can really see what you’ve got. The boys really wanted a biiiiiiiiig one:

but we showed them how wide as well as how tall the tree is (plus the COST!), and then everyone found their own favorite tree at a “reasonable” height:

And everyone agrees that purple flocked trees are bad! 🙂

The Feast of Lights

The UoR School of Music puts on the “Feast of Lights” each year, all the choirs and orchestra take part in a performance that marks the beginning of the season for lots of Redlands folk. Andrew is conducting the orchestra this semester as Co, the regular director, is on maternity leave, so he spent lots of time in early December at rehearsals and performances. The boys and I attended the Friday night premier. Unfortunately, it rained all day Friday so the traditional lighting of the green with luminaries didn’t happen, and the Nativity actors had to set up on the steps of the chapel:

The next day the skies cleared, and we heard from Nicholle (the choir director) that she was going to put up all the luminaries with just a couple of student volunteers, we stopped by on our way from picking out our Christmas tree to help fill and place the luminaries:

Here’s a picture (from the University website) of what it looks like when they’re all lit up. This is what folks who leave the chapel at the end of the service see (when it isn’t raining!)

 A Kitchen Christmas Tree

While decorating the main tree, Logan unearthed a single string of wooden “cranberries” we have. When he wanted to put it on the tree, I pointed out how small it was in comparison with the big tree. I told him about traditional popcorn and cranberry strings we would make for our trees growing up. He really wanted to do that, and I knew that the fun of stringing popcorn would wane long before there were enough popcorn strings to make a difference on the big tree, so I suggested we get a second small tree for the kitchen, and decorate it with food (and a few clay food/farm type ornaments we have), both boys were totally into that! So off we went to Lowe’s to pick up a “Charlie Brown” tree. Then I sliced a couple of oranges and limes

and dried them out in the oven:

it took several hours at 200-250 degrees F, but evenly sliced fruit came out looking quite nice!

Uneven slices not so much! But Logan got a decent amount of popcorn strung, and we have a kitchen tree!

Also in the kitchen are my holiday row houses, I made some cardstock trees like the photographer used while staging the houses for their cover shot in Quilting Arts Gifts this year:

And of course, the main tree looks glorious next to those fabulous stairs hubby did last summer:

The house is decorated for  Christmas, almost all the presents are made and in the mail – it’s time to make Christmas cookies!