Holiday Festivities, Part 1

While the fall/Halloween spirit seemed to pass me by before I realized it was here... I am very much in the spirit of the Christmas season! We're loving our advent countdown, talking a lot about the meaning of Christmas and our antique Nativity set, listening to Christmas CD's almost daily and getting into some crafts and baking. I even ordered photo cards to send this year after completely skipping them last year. And we have LOTS of Christmas books on hold at the library. I swear, those people see me nearly every day, picking up or returning something or other.

This was a craft idea I've had torn out of Family Fun magazine and filed under "Holidays" in my "ideas binder" (yep - I totally have one of those) for several years. It's super simple and a perfect kick-start to our holiday festivities since we were going to be putting up our tree very shortly. We made these over the course of two week nights during the week after Thanksgiving.

We started by painting some popsicle sticks (all I had were colored ones) brown.

After letting them dry, we hot glued them together...
...added a red pom pom nose and googly eyes...

...and added a red, yarn loop for hanging on the tree.

Presto! World's easiest Rudolph ornament!

{Random: Will's been smiling with closed lips for pictures a lot lately. Sometimes it's cute, but it just doesn't look natural to me. ;-) }

On Friday night (this past weekend), we finally got out our Christmas tree and put it up. I'm celebrating the fact that this is the FINAL YEAR we will be using this tree. Craig and I have continued to use the same short, sparse, Charlie Brown tree for the eight Christmases we've had in this house... FOLLOWING the 20+ years it went up in Craig's parents house while he was growing up. So! I'm putting my foot down. It has been nice to have the hand-me-down, but I'm ready to have my own, new tree. {P.S. I feel the same about the coffee table and end tables in our living room since they have the exact same story, but we're not ready to make any furniture purchases right now.}

I'm smiling because Will wanted to take my picture... but really, I hate this job. I just want to do the I-dream-of-Jeannie-head-nod and have the tree be up and lit and ready for us to add ornaments.

Will cracked me up. He really wanted to put the berries on the branches and so I showed him how to bend the floral wire around the branch. Later I heard him "teaching" Sophie how to do it by saying "first you bend... and then TWIST!" The way he was saying just made me laugh because he sounded just like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde when she said "bend... and SNAP!" ;-) Haha!

Friday, after the tree went up, we had pizza for dinner by candlelight... and just the light of the tree behind us. ;-)

And then the kids hung their Rudolph ornaments too.

Saturday morning we made what has become our traditional Christmas "candy cane cookies". The recipe is from Family Fun and is basically a shortbread with vanilla AND peppermint extract. I made the dough up on Friday night to chill and then we got to work as soon as we returned from the library Saturday morning.

The appeal of working with this dough is that it is very much like working with Play Doh. We roll it into 8" logs (or "worms" if you will) and then twist two colors together and bend them like a cane.

Some are neater than others... ;-)

But I really think they're cute and festive.

And they taste really good too! Let's be honest though... What doesn't taste good with that much butter in it? :)

We froze some for Santa's cookie plate and ate the rest up already. :)

On Saturday evening, we packed a to-go meal (quesadillas, raw veggie sticks/strips, apple slices and water bottles) and made the ~75 minute drive to Dearborn, Michigan to meet up with my friend Megan and her family for Holiday Nights at Greenfield Village. Megan was my co-worker and very good friend for 7.5 years before she took another job closer to her home in Dearborn this past August. I was absolutely devastated when she left and I miss her (and all our talks!) every day at work. We'd made plans to get together once before this but our plans fell through, so it was so nice to finally see her and her family. (Her husband, daughter & mom joined us for the evening.) Megan has a membership at Greenfield Village and they do all sorts of fun holidays and other festivities. So they go there frequently - like we might go to the zoo - and just walk around and check out whatever is going on. And they got us discounts on tickets for Holiday Nights too.

At the village, they had such a dreamy, old-fashioned, holiday atmosphere set up. There were costumed carolers and folks playing instruments, horse-drawn wagons and Model T rides, candlelit paths, an ice skating rink, Santa up on the 2nd story porch of a house with his sleigh and a spotlight, calling to the kids below and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, live reindeer, shops and a tavern where we enjoyed hot chocolate and some of our candy cane cookies that we brought along, a carousel from the early 1900's playing Christmas music that we rode, and lots of decorated historical homes such as that belonging to Noah Webster and the Wright brothers.

It was a really fun night and we all enjoyed the company and festivities.

On Sunday, our annual Wasserman family reunion took place around lunch time. As always, the gathering was enormous and the food was traditional and plentiful! There is always so much to eat and so many people to say hello to, most of whom we see only at this annual party. Santa made an appearance here too, only this time Sophie had an absolutely terrified reaction, wanting nothing to do with him and clinging for dear life when we were near him. :( Oh, well. We managed to return home and still get a decent nap out of both kids.

This picture is before we left and I just think Sophie looked so stinkin' cute in her outfit. I LOVE this new dressy coat from Old Navy and I got it for a good deal too.

Mya, Stella, Will & Sophie with my Grandma & Grandpa Konesky. The "Wasserman" family is Grandma's extended family. She was the youngest of 12 Wasserman children and the entire clan still gathers at Christmas and (a smaller gathering) in the summer. You can see the name tags my kids are wearing. That's how many people attend. Like, 300+!

Later on Sunday, we continued to pull out more holiday decor for around our house. It's pretty minimal, but we have a few traditional things. This year, we are making a much bigger deal of our antique nativity scene. My grandma bought it for our family at an auction before the kids were born and I love how rustic and handmade it looks. We're going to try to add to the "scene" at the appropriate time for each group of people, i.e. Mary & Joseph & the donkey on Christmas Eve, Baby Jesus on Christmas morning, the 3 Kings on the Epiphany (January 6th), etc. and I'm looking up some good childrens books to explain the Christmas story a little more in depth.

Another exciting piece of Christmas "decor" is Sophie's snow globe from Grandma & Papa Riedeman from her first Christmas. It plays "Hark the Harold Angels Sing" and she adores it. She's been carrying it around (I remind her that she has to be over carpet - not in the kitchen) and winding it over and over again. :) It's very sweet. The kids also loved hanging all of "their" individual ornaments on the tree too.

More holiday festivities to come!