The Holiday Recap

December is a blur. I guess it always feels that way, doesn’t it? The holidays come in like a rush and leave the same way. Then we’re left with January…gloomy, quiet January. (To be fair, January hasn’t been so bad. I kind of like staying in after a month of holiday parties and activities.)

We got our tree on the Portillo’s lot a few blocks from our house. It was SO convenient and it lasted a pretty long time (for a dead tree!) I am still not used to our higher ceilings here at the house but we juuuuust made it this year again! Whew!

On December 2nd, we hosted our annual Holiday Walk party. Forest Park hosts a holiday walk along Madison Street the first Friday after Christmas. Shops and restaurants have live window displays and specials, the tree gets lit, and Santa arrives and meets kids. It’s like a Hallmark movie here in Forest Park. Naoto and I have been inviting people over after the walk for soups and snacks for several years now and it’s grown from two people to thirty people. Naoto made minestrone and his famous chicken noodle soups and our house was full for the first time ever. (Last year we held the party outside around the fire pit which was fun, but less comfortable than being inside on a cold night!)

I ordered us all matching pajamas. Presley hated them. (But isn’t she so cute?) But for real, these are the first non-sweatsuit winter pajamas I’ve had in a long time and now there’s no turning back. I’ve ordered myself more.

We sent out loads of Christmas cards. They deserve their own post because like last year, Donovan captured Presley just perfectly.

We went to the year’s favorite activity, Chris & Heather’s Calendar Show, which was fabulous as always. Naoto and I got there late but ended up with a front row seat (well, stand technically) and I got to change out the artist cards! It was so ridiculously fun.

Due to a close call with Covid, I had to miss our book club tea this year. It was a bummer but I didn’t want to risk infecting anyone if I did have it. (Thankfully I came out unscathed!)

Christmas was very cozy at home. I’ll share my gifts in another post, but one of Naoto’s highlights is this cookbook holder made by my dad. We are trying to cook out of our cookbooks more (it’s been a long struggle) and this has been making it more convenient. (I sent this idea to my dad and he modified it a little bit to make it even better!)

Presley got slippers for Christmas…she tolerates them but will kick them off and send them flying through the air.

She also got a catnip banana for Christmas, which ended up being her favorite toy. She didn’t leave its side the entire day. (And totally like a cat, she hasn’t touched it since!)

I hosted the book club friends for a little post-Christmas dinner. I used my Ruby Red Depression Glass set and decorated the table with some of my favorite Christmas things (like my green mailbox!) and vintage Shiny Brites. I made Ina’s lasagna and everyone contributed for the appetizer, salad, and dessert. It was such a warm, comfortable night…I just love hosting small groups and using some of my more special things.

The Putz Christmas village has a new home in the kitchen! When we remodeled this fall, we added in this “china cabinet” area next to our new pantry area. It turned out to be the perfect place for the village. Plus, I love having some Christmas spread across the house. I’ll share our kitchen someday…we’re still waiting on our last light fixture to come in and still choosing furniture for the space.

And finally, we ended the year with some friends at a dinner party. It was a perfectly quiet way to say goodbye to 2022 and ring in 2023.

I hope your holidays were jolly and the new year is treating you well.

Recap of the Workshop at Forest Park Public Library

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I taught a winter card making workshop at Forest Park Public library last month. It was a drop-in class so people could come at any time and make a card or two. I have taught in-person card making classes, and I’ve taught a card making class on zoom, but I had never taught a card making class where everyone wasn’t working on the same card at the same time. I was a little bit nervous, but while making my samples, I figured there were several places in each card where independent work would give me a chance to help someone else. And it all worked out just fine. I even got the highest compliment from a women who makes cards all the time. She said that she learned some new things at the workshop. Goal achieved.

I had six card options–two origami, two with other paper folding, a layered card, and a shaker postcard. The glittered vintage paper trees were by far the most popular, and the most challenging. It’s really hard to get the hang of the folds, even though it looks so simple.

It was especially fun to see everyone making the cards their own. This is an example of a snowcat card based on my snowman card. I love how Michelle used the little gems to make a holly accent on the hat and just the whole concept of a snowcat!

Has anyone started thinking about their Valentines? Too soon?

Winter Card Making with Forest Park Public Library

I’m teaching a card making class at the Forest Park Public Library on Thursday! If you are local, you can sign up here. It’s a drop in class, so people can come and make a card or two and leave, or they can stay and make all five. I have a couple of Christmas ones, but also some general winter ideas so if Christmas isn’t your thing, there will be something for everyone.

I am bringing a typewriter, rubber stamps, vintage papers, some origami, and glitter…plenty of glitter. (‘Tis the season after all!)

This is my third library event. (I don’t think I told you about the week I presented about letter writing with Schaumburg Library, did an online Valentine making workshop with Forest Park Public Library, and closed on a house, have I?) Library events are a lot of fun–a very relaxed way to learn, and free!

I’ll be back with more Christmas posts–holiday parties, workshops, and wholesale orders are keeping me busy these days!

Valentine’s Mail

I’m very behind on my mail this year…these went out the day before Valentine’s Day and it’s just the tip of the iceberg of what I have to return. But hey, who doesn’t want some good red and pink mail all month long? I think the next time I go to a stamp show, I need to look into some more pink and red and love stamps…

I’m hoping to work on some mail today. I feel weird mail guilt about not participating in Letter Month like I usually do. But more than that, I miss sending mail and I have all this Japanese stationery to use up!

Are you participating in a letter writing challenge this month?

P.S. I’m back-dating some posts from December that I wanted to include for my own memories, but I don’t want to have Christmas content on the blog in February. I’ll try to link them on a current post as I finish them. If you follow the blog, sorry for the out of order content in your inbox!

Book Club Christmas Tea 2019

Last weekend was our annual book club Christmas tea and it was delightful, as usual. We had four kinds of sandwiches (egg salad, shrimp salad, roast beef with provolone, and cilantro chicken salad,) two kinds of scones (cranberry-orange and bacon cheddar,) Christmas cake, grape salad, and Christmas punch. I love a good tea sandwich so I ate way too many and also floated away from all the tea. Stasia brought corsages for everyone so it felt especially fancy. I think corsages are under-utilized and I’m going to demand one for every birthday from now on. We read PG Wodehouse which was enjoyable, but I read it all in a couple days so I was sort of Wodehoused out by the end. The writing is really charming though so hopefully I’ll be ready to tackle a short story here and there in the future. We always have party poppers with crowns, mustaches, and jokes. Reading the jokes and guessing the riddles is always my favorite part of the day. Three cheers for good book discussions in 2019!

Christmas Post Office

I’ve been wanting a Christmas village post office for awhile now. I have my Putz house village, and I’ve never seen a vintage paper post office before, so I told my mom and dad to keep an eye out for some vintage or new ceramic ones. Well, they found this perfect little jewel at a thrift shop for $2.50! They found the postman Santa last year. He might not be to scale but he fits right in!

I don’t know how vintage it is, but I think it’s charming and now I want a little collection of just random post offices (serendipitously found at thrift stores because I don’t need to stalk something else on eBay!) My mini post office collection of one is living on my desk so it stays safe from Presley. (She has taken to knocking things down at 4AM to get our attention.)

Tomorrow, I need to go to the actual, non-ceramic post office to buy some stamps for the church and to mail something…wish me luck!

Spending the Yen: Christmas Stationery

I found this Christmas stationery last year at Loft and it was pretty pricey…like way more than I usually spend for stationery in Japan which has so many things for cheap. But Naoto slipped it into my basket and told me to buy it…it’s hard to argue with him in Japan. It’s really lovely washi paper with a nice texture that makes me wish I used a fountain pen more. And the tree is embossed with red and iridescent ink. I hope I can make time to send out a Christmas letter or two this season!

Have you started your Christmas (or other holiday) cards yet? I haven’t…hopefully next week after my last show of the season I can make time for some mail and other holiday cheer!

Thanksgiving 2019

Thanksgiving seems like a really long time ago…I feel like I’ve already been swept into Christmas without a minute to catch up. I feel like with Thanksgiving being so late this year, the rush to start Christmas mode was really strong. We always get our tree right after Thanksgiving, so that didn’t really change, it just felt more hurried.We had a craft show on Small Business Saturday, so that sucked up some time, but I have to say, this is the first year in eleven years that I didn’t work on Black Friday and it was heaven! My parents stayed for part of Friday and we all went to Ikea together and it was just nice to relax with them and not be “on” at a store. (For many reasons, being “on” at a craft show is so much less exhausting.)

Anyway, Thanksgiving was small and lovely like always. This year, Naoto cooked a turkey breast in the crock pot and he really liked that. He felt less stressed, and we had fewer leftovers, which is great. I know Thanksgiving leftovers are a thing but I personally hate eating the same kind of thing over and over again and we’re really trying to lower our food waste, so fewer leftovers are a good thing around here.

I set the table kind of the same way as I have been, with vintage plates and books and a few little thrifted things. I didn’t even make place cards this year! I enjoy setting the table and making place cards but also, I enjoy doing other things, so I’m trying to put less pressure on myself to do all the things when it’s not always necessary. Sometimes work and craft show prep takes over. It was my mom’s first visit to Ikea and I think she enjoyed it, even though she didn’t find any curtains for her living room. I was a little bit worried about going out on Black Friday, but Ikea was pretty tame…a good day for trying out all the chairs and couches! Now, onto Christmas…

We are hosting a little party tonight after Forest Park’s Holiday Walk so after work, I have to finish cleaning for that…as busy as it feels today, I’m glad we are hosting something because it forced me not to drag out the decorating. (I never really finished decorating for Halloween because there was no deadline. I didn’t want that to happen with Christmas.) It’s just a low-key affair with some local friends and Trader Joe’s snacks and maybe a fancy punch…I can’t wait.

Have a good weekend!

Hallmark Christmas Movie BINGO

It’s the MOST wonderful time of the year! Hallmark Christmas Movies are running full-time, filling my tv, my home…my heart with g-rated, pure-as-snow Christmas cheer. I think I’ve mentioned before how addicting these movies are for me during the holiday months. I can’t stop watching, even though they’re all pretty formulaic and predictable and they are pretty…traditional. No one is getting tipsy at the holiday parties. (Honestly, I’m not even sure if the eggnog is spiked.) And no one is having any premarital shenanigans, no-siree. These movies are so innocent, there’s rarely a kiss before the couples are committed. All that said, I’m pretty cynical and even so, I find these movies so comforting and they’re a cozy background show to have on during decorating and holiday card writing.

It’s the tenth anniversary of Countdown to Christmas this year, so I thought I’d share some of my favorites in case anyone out there is watching or is tempted to watch. It was very hard to narrow it down, and I’m already feeling guilty for leaving Mariah Carey’s movie off the list, so maybe there will be a follow-up to this post during the season… My all-time favorite Hallmark Movie is A Very Merry Mix-Up with Alicia Witt. I think this was her first Hallmark Christmas Movie (in 2013) and she’s gone on to make one every year since. I like the story on this one: a woman goes to meet her fiancé’s family and accidentally ends up at the wrong house, but soon discovers how right the house really is. It’s basically one giant misunderstanding that leads to a cute, but predictable outcome. I like the chemistry between the leads and the chemistry with his family. This movie also has the ultimate evil boyfriend. (In case you don’t know, a typical Hallmark trope is to have a woman in a relationship with a man who clearly doesn’t value her or care about Christmas…usually he’s a businessman who only cares about money. Sometimes the roles are reversed and the woman is the cold-hearted Christmas hater…you know, for variety.) Christmas with Holly is on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel where the movies are a little more family oriented, but almost always have a love story too. Holly’s mom passed away and she has stopped talking and is being raised by her three (unprepared) uncles. One owns a coffee shop and he meets a toy shop owner and magic happens. (Not real magic…Christmas magic.) It’s sort of a modernized Three Men and a Baby, but with younger guys and a little girl. It’s a really sweet movie. The Christmas Card was kind of my first Hallmark Christmas movie. (It was made in 2006.) Faith, a woman from a small town, writes to a random solider, Cody, in Afghanistan. He is so moved by her letter and charmed by her stories of the town that he finds the town and stops to visit when he’s on leave after a tragedy in Afghanistan. They meet (randomly at a diner where they order the exact same meal involving extra crispy curly fries.) Cody ends up staying with Faith and her family–there’s an Army connection with Faith’s dad who is played by the loveable Ed Asner–and of course, they all fall in love. But the road to happiness is blocked by Faith’s boyfriend/fiancé (Skipper from Sex and the City!) who seriously couldn’t be more wrong for her. Ed Asner does his share of meddling to help Faith realize who she really should be marrying. I watch it every year. I haven’t been crazy about many of the newer Hallmark movies, but this one from 2017 was a winner for me. Holly is “Miss Christmas,” the person who chooses the Christmas tree for the “Radcliffe Center” in Chicago. Her search takes her to Claus, Wisconsin to answer a letter from a boy offering up his family’s tree. The boy happens to have a handsome single father and the family is recovering from the death of a close loved one. Who better to turn those sad hearts around than Miss Christmas? There are baking montages, ugly Christmas sweaters, a couple of misunderstandings, and lots of Christmas cheer in this one. Oh, and I really like the little boy–child actors in these movies can be…precocious–Joey is just precocious enough. And the grandpa…he’s punny. And finally, The Nine Lives of Christmas. Presley and I look forward to this one every year. What do you get when you mix a busy veterinarian student with a scarred, I’ll-always-be-a-bachelor firefighter, two cats, and an old house? A purr-fect Hallmark Christmas movie. This one has a shallow, evil girlfriend, a meddling sister, and a wise fire chief.

I am working my way through this season’s new movies. I’ll report back if there are any stand-outs in the new season.

I made a simple Hallmark Christmas Movie BINGO based on my years of watching these movies. click here if you want to play! You can print the cards or play online. (New cards can be refreshed by clicking at the top.) Let me know if I should add some more tropes…I know there are plenty I missed!

I’d love to know if you watch the Hallmark movies during the holidays. Which one is your favorite?

I’m off to decorate the tree! Everything feels so rushed this season with Thanksgiving being so late but I’m determined to be done tomorrow so we can enjoy as much of the lights and decorations as possible. Three cheers for Christmas lights (and silly movies) to get us through the darkest days of winter!

 

 

Halloween Snow

It snowed on Halloween this year and we had to break out our winter coats already. I wasn’t ready!!! I am still not ready! The snow started on Wednesday and I walked through Austin Gardens on my way to work. It was really pretty with the snow falling on the brightly colored trees. However, tree branches were falling like crazy all day because of the weight of the heavy, wet snow on the leafy branches. Thankfully, I made it through the park unscathed. The snow is all melted now and temperatures are back to fall-like levels. And the fall colors are still pretty vibrant. Halloween is always pretty low-key at our place since we don’t get trick-or-treaters. I’m recovering from a cold (again!) so I spent most of the day reading scary stories and hanging out with Presley, who really enjoyed her costume…

Such a good sport, that old cat.