Did you have a good Christmas? This one was particularly nice for our family. My girls are at a great age to really enjoy the holiday.
Oh, my sweet, sweet daughters. See that green dress? My mom crocheted that for me when I was little. I wore it on my first day of kindergarten with cowboy boots.
They're bundled up for school, so excited for Christmas break to begin. So many holiday parties, then finally home!
This was Piper's first year to really help with ornaments.
This has to be one of the best days of the year. Violet is really good at decorating. I'm glad she likes to help!
Adam puts his train from when he was a little boy around the base of the tree. The girls set up the snow village this year...they did a good job!
I love those German Christmas pyramids. We add extra candles around the base so it zooms around fast.
Nom! Our traditional Christmas breakfast....salmon and bagels with fruit and mimosas (for grownups)
Violet made our guinea pigs a "Feeding Station" from legos. This is Margaret.
Then one foggy Christmas Eve...
We have an owl! I get so excited when an owl moves into one of our boxes. I always have my fingers crossed for an owl. One year, a rude duck moved in. What was he thinking??? I don't even know how that duck squeezed itself into the box. It seemed way too small for him.
The soft hooting of an owl mixed with wind blowing through the leaves sounds like home.
The girls worked on gingerbread houses for HOURS.
The gingerbread houses were a big hit. We'll definitely do this again next year.
Making sausage! It's such a chore, but Adam is good at it. The pork is from wild hogs from our place. I like them with extra garlic and jalapenos.
Pigs 'n blankets....homemade beef & wild hog sausage and homemade yeast dough.
We make them every year. Next year we may try making mustard, too.
Adam thought one of the pigs in blankets looked like a baby Ewok.
I don't know what Adam was doing, but this is our celebratory Swiss cheese! We get a little wheel of it every year to eat on Christmas Day.
Cat jammies! We always get matching pajamas for Christmas.
Stringing popcorn and cranberries. I gave my youngest daughter a real needle and she only stuck herself once.
We also used apple jacks to make garlands.
They both ate a bunch of the cranberries. So tart.
It's our Nature Tree! We decorate a small tree for the animals. We even made a star out of toast for the top. By the next morning, almost everything had been eaten.
Our friend Marcia sent us this pretty hand embroidered tablecloth. It's so intricate...it must have taken weeks to make, if not months.
Paintings wrapped up and ready to go to their new homes for Christmas. It's so satisfying to paint for people....I feel like an elf!
Our Girl Scouts troop won 3rd place in our local Christmas parade. We had a Night Before Christmas theme. It was brrrrrr cold-thank goodness we all wore warm jammies. I like any event where the costume is pajamas.
Not really reindeer in the meadow, but we like to pretend. Now I need to put away the last few decorations. I'll think I have everything done, then I find some random Santa or tiny tree. Does that happen to you, to0?
Hey there... how nice your holiday looked! I love all your traditions (how wonderful is the nature tree for the animals, anyway?!). We didn't do a big tree this year, just a tabletop one, and I finally took it down and tossed it today. I always find little Christmas-y items and hidden pine needles weeks after it's over, too. Well, onto Valentine's Day next and seriously, I can't wait!!!
Posted by: Nan | January 07, 2017 at 01:49 PM
Thanks, Nan! The nature tree was my favorite thing this year, I think. We got so excited to watch out the window to see if it was getting any nibbles. Violet got one of those cool spy glass-type monoculars for Christmas, so she was glued to the window like a little pirate.
The needles on my floor are out of control. I've vacuumed four times and they're STILL in there.
Posted by: Laura Irrgang | January 08, 2017 at 01:04 PM