7th Day of Christmas and More of Our Christmas Day!

On the 7th day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five Golden Rings.
Four calling birds,
Three french hens,
Two turtle doves,
And a partridge in a pear tree.

Now for pictures of our Christmas Day at my mother's house.

Those of you who know Dawn at Dawn's Daybreak will remember her posting this crazy game about the naming the Christmas Carols. Well, I decided to print up copies of it and try it out on my family on Christmas Day. My sister-in-law's comment was "Oh no we gotta earn our way to the Christmas presents!" In the collage above you can see a few family members working on it. It turned out to be a lot of fun with a lot of laughter. My mom just got to laughing herself silly over the picture of the peanuts roasting their chests over the fire. That just struck her as hilarious. We were wondering if she was ever going to stop laughing. It was fun for me to see everyone having so much fun with this. Thanks Dawn for the idea! !
I got a few pictures of the Christmas decor around my mom's house. This angel choir above was my godmother's. Who is also my mother's aunt. My mother just loves this angel choir. I hope I get it eventually, but my mother's sister also wants it too. The choir is sitting on a red cloth woven by my godmother on one of her looms.

These buildings are actual buildings in the town of Lindsborg, Kansas. Here we have the Swedish Pavillion, Bethany Lutheran Church and Timber Cottage. Timber Cottage is where I bought one of my nativity scenes and the gnome I displayed in an earlier post. My mother has more, but this was all she had the energy to put out. I told her when she was too tired to put them up anymore, she could give them to me. Hint, hint. :-) This is where my father grew up which is why this is special.
My mother has an apple tree also. She gave me the one I have. But this one is special. It was made my father's high school woodshop teacher. That makes this one really special. Mine is made by someone else and not as well made as this one. The little tray is a Carl Larsson art piece. She has a larger picture by the same Swedish artist. The coasters were made by me one year. I made those as gifts. That was a big job. I don't remember how many total I made. My mother has 4 of them. Two of each design. It is cross-stitch.

And now we come to the dessert. The best part of course! The Polish kolachkes and rice pudding with some Swedish Lingonberry preserve. Yummy!!

6th Day of Christmas!

On the 6th day of Christmas my true love sent to me,

Six geese a laying,

Five golden rings.

Four calling birds,

Three french hens,

Two turtle doves,

And a partridge in a pear tree.

Update: In case anyone was wondering--I played a total of 12 hymns on Sunday. Whew! That was in addition to prelude and postlude music and one other piece of music during the service. No wonder I was pooped on Sunday and yesterday. Plus my thumb was sore. Not any more, but it was while I was playing. I was happy that people enjoyed it though. The main organist does not play on the pipe organ. She uses the electronic organ. So people said they really enjoyed hearing the pipe organ played. Made my day!

5th Day of Christmas!

On the 5th day of Christmas my true love sent to me.

Five Golden Rings.

Four Calling Birds,

Three French Hens,

Two Turtle Doves.

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Christmas is not over yet!!

I have been reading about others saying that Christmas is over and they are taking their stuff down already. But I guess if the stuff goes up right after Thanksgiving, it has been up a month or more already. Or almost a month. In actuality, Christmas is NOT over. Today is actually Day 4 of the twelve days of Christmas. After the twelve days, then it is Epiphany which is observed on January 6th. Last year January 6 fell on a Sunday and we did an Epiphany pageant at church. Right now we are waiting for the Wise Men to visit the Baby Jesus. Epiphany is when we celebrate the Wise Men's visit to see Baby Jesus. So I am not ready to say Christmas is over because it is not. Not yet. I got another Angel for Christmas! I guess this is an Angel Christmas for me. This one above arrived in the mail yesterday from my husband's brother. The same brother who gave us the blue stained glass angel I had posted for a Blue Monday once. Notice this one is blue too. I just LOVE this angel. I am keeping it out all year. I can't stand the thought of putting this pretty angel away for the year until next Christmas. This beautiful nativity scene was on display at church on Christmas Eve. It is not out anymore. I noticed that when I went to the church last night to practice the organ for today's service. Isn't it gorgeous?

The church was also decorated with poinsettas. People donate them in memory of loved ones. It is posted in the bullentin who donated them and who they are in memory of for this year. They are displayed so nicely this year. Well, actually they are every year.

Here is the tree at church which is also still up. The tree is decorated with Chrismons. Some are made out of styrofoam and beads and gold foil. The women's group made them one year. Quite a few years ago. Okay a lot of years ago. They are still holding up well. The small round ones are cross stitched and in small embroidery hoops for frames. One year when we were adding those to the collection my daughter, my mother and I all helped to make a few of those. Each of the Chrismons have a meaning. One year we did a program where each one was described and what it meant as they were put on the tree. On this first Sunday after Christmas we are doing only one service of lessons and carols. So today as the organist I have lots of hymns to play. It will keep me hopping on the organ bench for sure. I spent over two hours practicing last night. And this morning we will get over there at least one hour early so I can warm up my fingers for the service. As soon as I finish this post, I will need to sign off and start getting ready to go. I made or rather my husband made copies of each of the hymns I will be playing. That way I don't have to be flipping through books. I will just arrange the copied hymns in order and go for it. Also today everyone is supposed to bring goodies to share after church. I am bringing mine in the pretty tree shaped dish. This was another gift from a secret sister in a previous year. I do remember who this one is from. If she is there I will have to show her I am using her gift. Here it is filled with the goodies I made. Yum yum yummy! This time I used Christmas colored M&M's for the centers. These are the same goodies I made for my co-workers that I posted about for Blue Monday last week. So Happy 4th day of Christmas!!

Pink Saturday #15-Last one of 2008

Here we are at another Pink Saturday hosted by Beverly of How Sweet the Sound! Thank you so much to Beverly for being our wonderful host. It is a big job to keep this organized. Be sure to visit Beverly to see who else is posting for Pink Saturday! With this being the Saturday after Christmas, it is a given to be posting Pink Christmas gifts. That is if you got anything pink, which I did. Yay!

First up is something that was in my stocking. Slipper socks with pink stripes on them. You will notice there are also blue stripes, but I decided to use it for Pink Saturday. Besides I am having a hard time these days coming up with pink things. I need all the help I can get. Blue on the other hand I have plenty of. Just a matter of deciding what to share first and next and so on.
This angel doesn't have much pink, except for maybe her hands. But I just had to share it. I got it from my secret sister at church. We will reveal sometime in January. I can't wait to find out who it is. I have no clue this time. And this year whoever it is has been a wonderful secret sister. This is the Angel of Healing from Willow Tree designs. I was very touched to get this angel. My job is one where I help people to rehab or heal so they can get home. So this was very appropriate. Like I said, I was very touched.
Next is a bread basket I got from my mom. It came with four different covers. The bottom one has pink hearts and butterflies on it. Good to use around Valentine's Day but also good for the summer too. You can see the yellow one here too. Good for during the Spring.
This picture shows the covers to use during the Fall and the Holidays. I love this basket. I will be sure to use it often.
And last is a gift my husband got from my brother and his wife. They were recently in Hawaii earlier this month. Like very recent. They just got back on Tuesday I think. Just in time for Christmas. You can see the pink flowers on the purple cup. My daughter would probably love this because of the purple, her favorite color. I just may steal this cup from hubby and use it for my coffee. I am sure hubby will be willing to share it with me. He also got some coffee to go with the cup. This is just a piece of our Christmas. I will be sharing more later and also on Blue Monday. Might as well have fun spreading it out. Right?!?

Wishing everyone a Happy Pink Saturday!! Me? I am just happy it is Saturday.

P.S. I am noticing that my blog does not seem to be working quite right. If trying to look at the blog at the beginning, like if you click on home or when you first visit, my side bar does not show on the right side. It is all down at the bottom of my blog. But if you click only on an individual post then you can see the side bar where it is supposed to be. Does anyone know why it is doing that and how I can fix it? I notice that I do not have that issue with my craft blog. Grr! Thanks for any help you can give me. :-)
UPDATE: I did a search on Blogger help forum and finally found the answer to my problem. It had to do with the publishing aspect. On the previous blog I had checked the box to ignore the fix the html thingy. So I republished my previous post and deleted the highlighted places it was telling to delete so post can be published. After fixing that, my blog loaded correctly for me. Yay!! Learned something new, which is always good.

Finally More Christmas Decorations!

I never did get around to posting the rest of the pictures I took of the decorations in my home. I don't have a lot this year. But I did do more than I did the last two years. Being involved in the Land of Blog does that to you I guess. And another thing is getting more used to having only the two of us at home for Christmas. After so many years with the kids around, it is still hard adjusting to not having the kids around for Christmas. This is the top of my pie safe which is in the family room. We bought this pie safe unfinished before we had our daughter. It has served us well over the years. Right now it holds cookbooks and boxed food items.
This is a close up at the left end of the pie safe. I am using the upside down wine glass idea again. I find that works very well when trying to add height and variation in the display. I got the little boy on a sled and the cup in 1980 the year of our son's first Christmas. The ornament on the glass says 1984, my daughter's first Christmas. And there is a little bitty Teddy Bear book. That was also a gift.
A lady at our church had these bear ornaments. She knew I collected teddy bears and so she passed them on to me. The bear on the left is a trinket box. It splits around the bears tummy into a top and a bottom of the little box. It was a gift from a previous secret pal at church. The white bears on the right was a gift also. I forget where the bear in the back came from.

This is at the right end of the pie safe. There is another little bitty book. The block ornaments have always charmed me. I think they were gifts when I was working for the school district. The Santa once held See's Candies chocolate balls. That was also a gift. The box on the right once had a truffle in it. I loved the box so I saved it. The ornament on top was from a student when I was working in special Education. So that is pie safe. It has been a fun place to decorate and every year it is different. I seem to never do the same thing twice.

This mosaic is the top of a dresser we have in the living room. The wall hanging was hand woven on a loom by my godmother. The same loom you saw in my Crafts blog if you have followed that one. We got it the first Christmas we were married. Then the following year when I made the crocheted snowflakes while I was pregnant I added one to the top of the tree on this banner. This display is mostly swedish things. The apple tree on the left is from Sweden. My parents gave that to us one year. In front of that is the gnome we bought in Lindsborg. The same artist who did one of the nativity sets I posted earlier. Then I have the red Swedish candle holders. I also have the Swedish Angel chimes. I needed candles for that and was able to find some at our local Scandanavian shop. The little tree on the right I usually use for minature easter ornaments. This year I put the red and white swedish ornaments and the square plastic canvas ornaments my mother made one year.

The top of my linen press has a snowman theme. The taller two are coffee cans wrapped in batting. A teacher I worked with had them and decorated the classroom with them. She no longer wanted them and asked if I wanted them. Sure, I'll take them. That was in 1991. I have had them out nearly every year since then. The one in the middle I believe was a gift. The ones on the left and the right are from Hallmark. The one on the right was a gift from a secret pal a couple of years ago. I went and got the one on the left this year when I realized I needed it to balance out the display. I don't know if you can see it to well, but on the shelf are three Avon bottles I have kept since I emptied them of Sweet Honesty. And the two wooden dolls are from Finland. They used to belong to my godmother who was Finnish. The little stocking are made from felt. I bought them at a Christmas Bazaar when my kids were still in elementary school. They had candy canes in them originally. Now I like to hang them somewhere. This year on this shelf works well.

There you have it, the rest of my Christmas things for this year. Not everything is out and no big tree for my ornaments. Maybe next year. I have to work today, hopefully only 4 hours. But we have suddenly had a big jump in admissions. The hospitals are probably trying to move anybody they can before the holidays into rehab facilities, so we have been swamped all of a sudden. I am worried whether they have kept me to 4 hours today. But a couple of other therapists of volunteered to work tomorrow so I get tomorrow off. I was originally going to work 4 hours tomorrow too. A surprise gift, getting the day off. Medicare does not take a holiday, therapy goes on, especially for those who just recently got admitted. However, I will have to work an 8 hour day on Friday when I am normally a 6.5 hour per day person. Busy, busy!

Tonight we will go to Christmas Eve service at church. And then in the last few years we have been driving around to look at lights on our way home. So we will probably do that again tonight. A new tradition we have is to be on the phone with our daughter as we open each other's gifts. But hers to us have not gotten here yet. But ours to her has. Also we open our stocking gifts while we are on the phone. This year she works at the hotel tonight and then she works again tomorrow. So the hotel is providing her with a room, so she does not have to go back home and then turn around again to come back to work. The plan is for her to call and wake us up when she gets off work,( there is a 2 hour time difference). Then we will open gifts together, she will bring hers with her to work, then she will hit the sack for some sleep before going back on the job later on Christmas Day. Doing this is the closest we can do to being together without actually being together. Maybe by next year we will have a webcam and can actually see each other open gifts. Now that would be fun! Plus if our son gets one, then we can watch our granddaughter open gifts too. Wouldn't that be cool!?!

I wish all of my new and wonderful blog friends a very Merry Christmas with your loved ones. Or has merry as you can get. I know for some of our blog friends, getting through the holidays is difficult every year and especially difficult this year. My thoughts and prayers are with those having a difficult time. I pray that those friends will be comforted knowing we are thinking of them. I am especially thinking of Sweetie who recently lost her beloved Pap and also of Stacey of A Lamb in the Field who last I heard was with her mother. One more I am thinking about is Susan of Sweetpea Sue's Cottage. I hope to hear from Susan soon too.

Thank you so much to all my followers and all the others who leave sweet comments. You all have enriched my life so much. I always wake up in the morning eager to see what every one is up to. And eager after work to check in again. You have brought tears as I cry with you and smiles as I laugh with you. Thank you again. And now I really need to go and get on with my Christmas Eve day. Merry Christmas everyone!!

Blue Monday #13

It is time for Blue Monday again. Sally at Smiling Sally hosts this blue Monday for us every week. Go and check her blog to visit others who are posting for Blue Monday.

Yesterday was the start of week 4 of the Advent season. This is the fourth verse of the hymn about lighting the four candles to watch for Messiah. My header picture has also been changed to reflect that it is now Week 4. In my church, blue is the color for the season of Advent.

I got an easy candy recipie from Lisa and she couldn't remember where she got it. Yesterday I decided to make it. It turned into a bigger project than I expected because we decided to not only give some to my fellow therapists at work, we also decided to give some to his co-workers as well. That turned into making 24 gifts for our co-workers combined. I started with mini pretzels and layed then out on the cookie sheet. Oh and oven was preheated to 200 degrees. Then we had to dig into the Hersey's kisses. See the blue on the packaging above.

We also needed M&M's. Here are a couple of blue ones and the wording on the little strips of papers is in blue!

Here I have the Hersey's kisses sitting on the pretzels. Boy that was the time-consuming part. Hubby and I did this project together. I was glad too, otherwise I would probably still be working on it and it is now past 1 am my time. At this point we put the cookie sheet in the oven for 5 mins. Remember the oven is at 200 degrees.

Then we take the cookie sheet out of the oven and press an M&M in each Hersey's kiss while it is still warm. Push down good, but carefully. Then I transfered them on to a plate with wax paper on it. See my plate has blue. It is the Blue Goose pattern that used to be available at Mervyn's. You can also see the blue M&M's too. After putting them on the plate then it went into the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up the soft chocolate. We were very good. We did not taste any until we figured out how many we were able to make and divy up between 24 gift packages. I finally went to the Dollar Tree in my town for the first time. That is where I found these containers and the mini pretzels. We had to stop there again on Sunday to get more of these containers when we decided to make gifts for our co-workers. Then while we were working on the project, hubby went back again to get more pretzels. What a project.

Here are the finished gifts in the containers. You can see some of the blue M&M's peeking through. We will be taking these to work, tomorrow,uh I mean today since it is now after midnight. Silly me being up so late. I also added loose M&M's, extra Hersey's Kisses and one cookie each that I also baked. The easy way, frozen cookie dough. I hope our co-workers appreciate the little gifts we put so much effort into on Sunday. Hubby and I had fun working on this project together. In between we cooked dinner and cleaned up most of the kitchen too.

Happy Blue Monday and Merry Christmas to Everyone!!

Pink Saturday #14 and A Happy Birthday to Someone Special!!

Here we are at another Pink Saturday! I seem to be able to find pink somewhere each week so far. I want to thank Beverly at How Sweet the Sound who hosts Pink Saturday for us each week. Go visit her to see who else is participating in Pink Saturday. Okay, it is going to look like I am really pushing it to find pink here today. But there is a reason for this particular set of pictures. Today is my son's 28th birthday and since he is my first child, I have now been a mom for 28 years!! I find that hard to believe. So what do I have that is Pink on this anniversary of my son's birth. First of all, I want to note that his birthday falls on a Saturday and he was born on a Saturday. So I find myself reflecting on what I was doing on the Thursday before and the Friday before. On the Thursday before I had my college roommate over to our apartment for dinner. My due date was not until Jan 17th. I remember complaining to Debbie (my roommate who died in 1984) that I was tired of being big and awkward. I was just so ready to have this pregnancy over with and for the baby to arrive. Well, the next day, Friday the 19th, my water bag broke. At that time, the policy was that if the water bag broke the baby had to arrive within 24 hours. This turned into a long labor and our precious son was not born until Saturday morning. I missed having a C-section by 2 hours. The doctor who admitted me was all set to do a C-section on Saturday morning. But when he arrived to start his shift, there I was in the delivery room. I was very relieved to not have that C-section. Perhaps I complained too loudly and that was why my little guy came 4 weeks early. His weight was normal, nothing was wrong and I was able to take him home on Sunday, Dec. 22nd. My mother flew down to be with us and help me with learning to care for a brand new baby for the first time. Also it was the first time my family was split up at Christmas. It was strange for my dad and brothers to be without my mother and me. But it was all for a good reason. We also never got a tree that year, we got kind of busy obviously! LOL! So now that you read all that, you are probably wondering where is the pink here besides a new pinkish baby. On my table I have this basket of ornaments. You can see the basket in the first picture above. The next picture directly above is a close up of the ornaments in the basket. First you can see the ornaments I have posted on a Pink Saturday before I think. The fabric ones that are made from scraps of my wedding dress and my bridesmaids dresses. There is pink in the flowers in the print the bridesmaids wore. My sister-in-law had made these for us for our first Christmas.

This ornament you can see a little bit of pink in it. The present on there seems pink to me. This is the ornament given to us for our son's first Christmas in 1980. This side says "A son is...a maker of memories, a source of pride...A son is love."

Then the other side says "Christmas 1980"

Also in this basket is the ornament from our daughter's first Christmas in 1984. It is a pale pink ornament with girly things on it. This side says "Baby's First Christmas."

On this side, the flag at the top has the year on it. 1984. Across the bottom is says "A Baby Girl is love that grows in the warmth of caring hearts." There are different shades of pink in the pictures around this ornament. Try clicking on the pictures to see a closeup. Both of these ornaments are special to us. Since I don't have a big tree up this year, displaying them in a basket on the table was the next best thing. That way they are still out for me to enjoy!

Happy Pink Saturday!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now for the other part of this post. My son's birthday! I wanted to share a few pictures of him growing up into the man he is today.

This is one of my favorite pictures of him. This was his Kindergarten picture. I still have it in a frame. I just love the cute little guy he was here. Oh wait, he is still cute. I get to say that because I am his mom!
When he was in 7th grade, he dressed as an old guy for Halloween. He did a pretty good job acting the part. We used something to turn his hair all white. That was also the year he had to help out at the community Halloween party as part of an assignment for his social studies class. His teacher is involved in local government and so pushed community involvement whenever possible. His teacher and I used to live in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools and were involved in the same 4-H club. It was kind of strange that both of my kids ended up having him for a teacher. His younger brother was my age and was in most of my classes as we were growing up.
His graduation picture! He is one handsome/cute guy here. Remember now, I get to say that cuz I am his mom.
Here is a more recent picture of him taken maybe 3 years ago or so. I love his soft look here.
I made this collage after he graduated from high school and gave as a gift to family members. I don't remember how many of them I made. On the back of the frame I have a listing about what year and where each pose was taken. I have a picture from shortly after he was born and for every calendar year until he graduated from high school. That last picture on the right is was at graduation. I got pictures showing the different things he did growing up. A couple of Halloween pictures, a couple of band pictures, boating, fishing, first day of school in kindergarten, baseball, scouts and theater. The picture just to the left of him in cap and gown was his costume as King Grin in the play "Snow Queen". The picture before that is just before he went to London with his high school band to march in the New Year's Day parade there. That was quite an honor for the band to go there. I still have to make this collage for my daughter and she graduated in 2002! I would say I am very very very late making that one.

So thank you for sharing my pink saturday and my memories of giving birth and my son growing up to the man he is today. And son, if you are reading this, HAPPY 28TH BIRTHDAY!!! I hope you are having a great day. I miss you tons and can't wait until the next time we can get together.

Christmas Cookies Recipes

I got this recipe in an email today and I just had to post it here. It is posted here exactly as I received it.


Christmas Cookies Ingredients:

* 1 cup of water
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 cup of brown sugar
* lemon juice
* 4 large eggs
* 1 cup nuts
* 2 cups dried fruit
* 1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequilla

Sample the Cuervo to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again to be sure if is of the highest quality, pour one cup level and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add one teaspon of sugar...beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the Cuervo is still ok...try another cup, just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Pick the friggin fuit off the floor. Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt or something. Check the Cuervo Jose. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar or somefink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven.

Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.

Cherry Mistmas

Three Or More Thursdays #7

I guess when you have three or more of something it is time to call it a collection. No wonder I seem to have so many collections. Makes me think of that song......darn I can't remember the title or the words to that song. Oh well. Well, here goes, my collections for today's Three or More Thursday. Thank you to Tam at The Gypsy Corner for hosting Three or More Thursdays.

First up is my tree collection. The one in the middle is made from wood. It was a gift to me one year from a secret pal when I was working for the school district. The school I was at did a secret sister thing most years. I have always loved this tree. The little bows have come off a couple of the packages. I should probably replace them with new bows since it really isn't that hard to do. I have just been lazy or forget to think about getting some really small bows when ever I am out. The other 2 trees are from Avon. I don't remember how come I ended up with two. I think both came from my mother-in-law. She gave me one, then maybe forgetting she gave me one already she gave me another one. Actually I don't remember if that is how it happened or not. But that is okay I like having two. I never use them for their intended purpose. The little holes on them are for toothpicks with either gumdrops or little cheese squares stuck on them. And the little bear and doll hold salt and pepper if you want. But I don't use them for that. I like to just display them somewhere every year. This is my first time to actually group them together like this.
My next collection is angels. These are Christmas angels. I have other angels one of which I have shown on here before, the blue stained glass one. This one is a Wildflower Angel-Narcissus for December. This was also given to me from a secret sister for my birthday one year. Boy, I am realizing I have gotten some nice things from the various secret sisters I have had over the years. The next two are from the House of Lloyd. The one above I got because her name is Sara and my daughter's name is Sara. I think I will have to turn this one over to her eventually. I may have given to her as a gift, but it is still in my Christmas things. So my sweet daughter, when you read this, is this one of the things I have given to you and I am supposed to eventually give it back to you? Along with the white dala horse and the blue Shirley Temple pitcher. Anything else? Oh and the boxes of the Ashton Drake Doll ornaments. These two bear angels are singing their hearts out for Christmas. I just love this one since I do have a bear collection too and that was why I had to buy it. It does say on the bottom that they are part of The Bearsley Family Collection and their names are Jeremiah and Penelope and that they were from House of Lloyd. This is the only thing I have from The Bearsley Family. Now I wish I had been able to get more. After all, they are bears. Thank you for visiting me today. Happy Holidays to everyone. I can't believe Christmas is only a week away. Aack! I need to get my kids stuff mailed. Like today!!