eight

A few years ago, my man's parents gave us a beautiful nativity scene.  The figures are all knitted and felted by a local woman, and the wool is from the artist's own sheep.  It's lovely, and I adore getting it out each year and setting it up under our tiny tree.  In seasons past, though, when I put it out, I couldn't help feeling that something was missing.

That "something" appeared yesterday, in a shipping box from Ohio.  Carefully wrapped in tissue paper and bubble wrap was the creche set that we put up every year when I was a  child.  I remember spending hours standing on a tall red stool so I could reach the mantel over our fireplace.  I would play with the figures, moving them around to tell stories that--looking back--probably had nothing to do with Bethlehem.  To be fair, I probably just treated the whole thing as a seasonal replacement for my Playmobil figures.  But that's not the point...

Now the set is at my house--my "grown-up" house--and each year, I'll be able to take the pieces out of the box and share them with whoever happens to be around as our family changes and grows.  Even thought they're no longer stored in newspaper scraps from 1982--I swear I still remember what it smelled like--these little figures will always have the power to transport me.

eleven

Ours is a very small tree.  It is small and fake, but still fairly adorable, and I think we'll have it until it falls apart someday.

I was talking yesterday with someone who buys a new ornament for her tree every year.  I thought this was a sweet idea that I might try, too, until I realized that I would probably have to stop the year after next because our little tree would be too full for me to add any more decorations.

Besides, I don't like buying ornaments.  I'd much rather make them.  While I don't know that I'll have time to make anything new this year--eleven days!--maybe you're feeling crafty.  If so, here are a few ornament-making projects that have caught my eye:

easy felted wreath

paper snowflake template

time-consuming but sweet paper garland

clothespin people

jingle mouse!

nineteen

When I was a kid, there was one house in town that was famous for its super-elaborate holiday light display.  After church on Christmas Eve, we would do a drive-by--along with lots of other families--to see the moving reindeer covered in tiny white lights, the red and white flashing candy canes, and the giant sleigh that sat--mysteriously unoccupied--in the middle of the front yard.  For the under-ten set, it was absolute magic.

Now that I'm older, it takes a little more to amaze me, but I'm still ridiculously taken with over-the-top holiday lights.  In December, I plan my walk home from work according to which street has the best lights.  It's probably for the best that our building doesn't seem to have any exterior power outlets.  Who knows what kind of electrical kitsch I'd be indulging in?

I know I'm not the only person in the world that's sickly fascinated by this subject, so I hope you'll forgive me for the following links...

Find out how Christmas lights work.

Watch a light show that's so bad, it's good.  Or maybe still kind of bad. 

Put on a synchronized light show of your own.

Make it a game.

the groom

I've addressed this subject before, but I'm really feeling it this week.  You all know how fond I am of Mouse at Souris Mariage, and I'm almost always in total agreement with her.  Her post yesterday touched on "how to get the guy you're marrying to do one of the things on his checklist."

And, well, look:  I understand that this must be a common thing that girls are dealing with all the time in wedding world.  It's just that, of all the troublesome things I'm wrestling with in these last precious days, my man not doing things is not among the concerns.  If anything, it's kind of been the other way around.  My partner-in-crime is in Getting Things Done mode, and sometimes, it's all I can do to keep up.

He has single-handedly constructed our pig-shaped pinata, a process that's taken almost a week, seven layers of paper-mache, and one very big balloon.

He also ended up being the person to sew together the fifty or sixty feet of pennants that I was very excited about six months ago but never managed to actually assemble.  My dear stepmother offered some initial instruction on the sewing machine, but my man took it from there, sewing away long after I'd called it a night.

He's also managed to transfer our giant wedding music playlist onto a compatible computer, led the charge on both our coleslaw and our potato salad, mowed a giant chunk of my parents' even gianter lawn, reminded me to call the tent rental guy, washed his fair share of canning jars and cute vintage tableware, met with Mike the Pig Roaster to discuss Saturday's game plan, and done pretty much every thing else that seems to suddenly need doing here in the final hours before the Big Day.

Oh, and he's also been spray painting these awesome toy animals for our "table number" scheme.  Yes, we stole the idea from Martha, but since when was that a bad idea?

Here's hoping that those of you that are planning weddings have been fortunate enough to find a partner who wants to share in the fun.  I'm constantly being reminded of what a lucky girl I am.

Three days to go.  This thing is really happening.  There's no going back now...

cans

Eight days and counting.  We've been pecking away at the to-do list, but it seems like something in a Greek myth that grows two new heads for every one that you bravely hack away.  A Hydra.  The to-do list is a Hydra.

Today was a trip to my grandparents' house.  This trip, like every other I've made in recent years, culminated in loading piles of things in the car, things that my grandmother has been "saving" for me.  Some days it's just fresh dill and green beans.  Once, it was a pair of mittens that belonged to my mother.  Today, along with some long-lost stuffed animals and an heirloom piece of embroidery, there were jars.

My grandmother calls them "cans," not jars, and while I understand why, it still sounds funny when I say it.  She says these jars are "green," too, to distinguish them from the clear ones.  

I'll call them blue, instead, but on every other point and detail of home canning, I defer to my grandmother, who has been canning everything from peaches to beets for the past seven decades.  Even today, a trip to her cellar will reveal shelves and shelves full of canned goods from last season--more than she and my grandfather could ever eat.  My grandmother grew up during the Great Depression and to this day, she cannot abide waste.  Of anything.  Including a perfectly good cucumber.

My grandmother obviously hails from an earlier time, and I've made plenty of choices in my life that she disagrees with.  If she thought there was anything strange, though, about our wanting to borrow a boxful of "cans" to stick flowers and candles in at our wedding next weekend, she never showed it.  She just asked how many we'd need, and whether we'd rather have pints or quarts.

We didn't really have solid answers for either question--we are still making some of this up as we go along.  We just took the box that was closest to the door, and we'll be scrubbing them tonight, along with the rest of the thrift store dishes.

I've said this before, but we won't be the first couple in the world to have thrift store china and vintage mason jars at our wedding.  And I've said this before, too:  I don't care.  We're surrounding ourselves with the people we love and the things we like to look at, and I don't think there's a darn thing wrong with any of that.

I told my partner-in-crime that even if we don't end up with flowers to put in them, I still think the jars will look nice on our reception tables. My man laughed a little bit at that, but I'm hoping you'll agree with me...

happy couple

If I'm going to spend days locked in the house, I'm at least going to get something done.  Here's the latest incarnation of our cake toppers.*  There are still some things I would do differently, if I had the project to do over again, but I've put some good work in, and I'm almost ready to call these kids done.  I'll varnish them with a clear coat, and they'll be dry by the time we tuck them into a suitcase at the end of next week.

There are going to be a lot of things going into suitcases over the next few days.  And maybe a few things shipped, too.  When we first talked about having a wedding two thousand miles away from the place where we live, I don't think we really considered some of the details involved.

We've got most of it figured out, I'm happy to say.  Not all of it, of course.  Where would be the fun in that?  We've still got another twenty-two days to kill, right?

If you've got time to kill, might I recommend a visit to A Practical Wedding?  A few posts in the past week or two have really gotten my brain going.  Like this one about dealing with in-laws (an area I've been particularly lucky in...) or this one about Waiting to Do It.  I'm choosy about my wedding blogs, and I do like the ones with lots of pretty pictures and cute diy projects, but I really think Meg over at APW has got it going on.

I hope you all have a happy weekend.  I've got a lot planned, including some mild bridal/bachelorette celebrating and the inevitable purchase of my final issue of Martha Stewart Weddings.*  Hopefully, you're up to something fun, too.  See you on Monday!

*If you squint, you can see my little blue shoes!
**Yes, I know.  It's a bit too late to be gleaning menu ideas or decorating tips, but this is the very last issue I'll ever be able to rationalize purchasing.  I just want to look at all the pictures.  After this, it's over.  I promise.  I can quit anytime I want to...

messes

This is one of our last free weekends before we fly to Ohio, and I have plans to make several wedding project-related messes.  Here's a peek at the first of them:

I wrote about this adorable diy cake topper kit from goosegrease months and months ago.  Obviously, I haven't done much with it since then, but now it's time to get busy.  It turns out that some of my concerns about the project were valid.  Painting is hard.  And there's definitely pressure to get the details right.  Which is tough, since a few of those details are still up in the air.  Should the bride wear her glasses?  Which tie will the groom finally decide on?  What about the as-yet non-existent whimsical, wispy head piece thingie?, etc.

All the worries aside, though, this is kind of fun.  It reminds me of Mrs. Reiff teaching my fifth grade art class.  I could hear her voice in my head tonight as I cleaned the paint out of my brushes, telling us to handle our brushes gently, as though we were petting a cat.  (It sounds a little funny now, but I think we understood what she meant at the time...)

So.  I have more painting to do this weekend.  And some sewing.  And maybe some stapling and gluing as well.  I'll be back on Monday to let you know how it all goes...

Happy weekend!

almost

Usually, when I'm writing about fun stuff that comes through the shop, I like to show you pictures of what I found, and then more pictures of what I ended up doing with it.  Today, though, all I can show you is the "before."  This time, there isn't any "after."  Just when I was trying to decide what awesome new thing I could make with all these bits and pieces of metal, a really nice lady came along and bought them all.

So now all I can do is daydream.  They could have been centerpieces or candelabras.  

Or bouquets.

Or pictures frames.

But no.  I hesitated a moment too long, and now they're gone.  It's probably just as well.  I didn't really need another dozen projects anyway.  Still, it's tempting to think of what might have been...

quitting

Another busy day today, getting things ready for the workshop this weekend.  The event is right around the corner, and as the minutes tick by, I'm finding that I need to adjust my expectations of myself.  There are things I'd planned to do that won't get done, last-minute projects that will be scratched off the list, and absolutely "perfect" ideas that will just have to be "good," instead.

I'd like to think that this is all really good practice for the Big Day coming up in June.  It's important to remember to take deep breaths and to treat yourself well.  At some point, you need to just sit back and be satisfied and enjoy the results of your hard work.

Of course, it's one thing to be able to recognize all that, and it's another thing entirely to put it into practice.  I'm actually pretty lousy at calling it quits.  I have a very hard time saying, "Enough is enough."  I always want to chase the dream up until the very last second.

There is one situation, though, in which I can almost always be relied on to quit.  When I am not immediately good at something--something that I've never tried before--my first instinct is to stop trying. I don't like losing.  I don't like making mistakes.  I don't know if it's just my nature to be this way, or if it's some indirect result of how I was raised.  Regardless, I've found enough things that I'm at least moderately good at to be able to get away with avoiding the things that I don't take to right away.

All of which brings me to the drama of the day.  The pom poms.  If you read the wedding blogs, or flip through the magazines, you know that tissue paper pom poms have been all the rage for quite some time now.  I thought it would be fun to have a few for the workshop space on Saturday, and when I saw that Martha had a how-to on her website, I knew that I was set.

Now, Martha has never steered me wrong.  I've always maintained that if you are willing to follow her instructions without question, you will not fail.  Baking a tart, getting grass stains out of cotton, decorating the table for Thanksgiving.  There's nothing Martha can't help you do.

If all that is true, though, then how did I end up with something that looks like this?

Such a sad little muppet of a pom pom.  To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement.  I was overwrought.  I was bereft.  It had seemed like such an easy thing to do.  How could I have made such a mess of it?

Of course, the answer is that I needed a little more practice.  After a few hours of being vaguely mad, and some of that deep breathing I was preaching about earlier, I gave it another go.  I really had to make myself do it.  Mostly, I was dreading another tissue paper travesty.

Instead, though, I got a pom pom.  And then another one.  And another one.

The weird part is that I skipped some of Martha's directions.  That whole trimming the ends to look like flower petals?  I ditched it entirely.

And it worked.  These things aren't works of art, but I like them anyway.  They're bright and fun, and they're a nice reminder that I shouldn't take myself--or my little projects--too seriously.