Mosaic Monday - Christmas Decorations

I'm joining Mary at The Little Red House for Mosaic Monday. Above you see a few of my Christmas decorations. Starting in the upper left corner going clockwise are some clothes pin angels I made for my Mom many years ago, the snowy SNUGGLE bunting I made last year, a little glitter house, an old Santa ornament, one of our first ornaments bought way back in 1973, the glitter church I made this year, some reindeer candle holders, a little figure in the glitter village, and finally in the center is the tiny Silent Night Chapel from Austria. It's a souvenir of my trip there in 2005. You can read more about the chapel here.

I hope your Christmas decorating is going as planned or if not exactly as planned at least to your liking. Please drop in and visit the other participants for more Mosaic Monday.

Granny basket

We are having a girls' day out tomorrow and we are going somewhere where I will need my Granny Basket. Can you guess where?

And I made this liner for my basket so little things won't fall through the wires. And I decorated it especially for Amongst The Oaks.

And I'm so excited because we are going to the Sacramento Antiques Faire. I just HOPE it doesn't rain. But I'm taking my umbrella just in case.

Mistletoe Ball

I borrowed {ok, stole} this mistletoe ball photo from Martha Stewart. What a nice old fashioned decoration for the holidays. I thought about making one, so the other morning the Lord of the Manor and I cut some mistletoe out of a tree on our morning walk. And we brought it home and dumped it on the floor just inside the front door. And there it sat for several days.

This morning I thought it had sat there long enough, so I did this:

Yes, that's right, I just nestled it into the chandelier on the front porch. No trimming, no bow, no craftiness, I just plopped it up there!

Some people have compared me to Marthat Stewart. Heck, some people have even called me Martha Stewart. I guess that will stop now, eh?

Cranberry Glass Ornaments

We got our Christmas tree up and decorated last weekend. I tried to decorate it in shades of cranberry, red, white and gold. Which was difficult because I can't find cranberry glass ornaments...

but I have this old Santa that is in the right colors.

And I found this new Santa ornament at World Market.

And I recently got these ornaments from my Mom's collection. I had made them for her many years ago.

You all know how much I love cranberry glass so I left it on the mantle this year and added gold candle holders, the red transfer ware photo frames with pictures of my girls and Santa, red stockings, and some gold ribbon and tassels.

After searching for cranberry glass ornaments and finding just this ONE {isn't it gorgeous?} at World Market, I thought maybe I could make some using glass paint and clear ornaments.

So I assembled the materials and a few vases for inspiration...

mixed the paint and thinned it just a little....

and this is what I ended up with. Not exactly cranberry glass, but close. I think I thinned the paint too much, because it just kept running out until they were pink. Maybe a second coat would help. Oh, well, there's always next year. But for now I'm using them anyway...

but I'm hiding them behind the ribbon so no one will see how pale they are.

Glitter Village

We got the little Glitter Village set up the other night. First we stacked some books up on a table with about 5" of books in the back, about 3" on the sides, and about 2" in the front. Then we laid a set of icicle lights on them and covered that with two layers of batting. I trimmed the batting to match the shape of the table and we poked holes for the icicle lights where we wanted each house.

Then we snaked each lights up through the batting, added the houses and poked the lights into the houses. Lastly we added some bottle brush trees and a few little figures. Voila, Glitter Village.

Here's Billy getting a card out of his mailbox.

Here's the choir leaving the church after practice.

Here the mailman delivering more Christmas cards.

And here are the kids who live at the little brown cabin making a snowman. The cabin was Teen1's idea and I like it a lot.

A word of advice if you decide to make some glitter houses: DO NOT use a toothpaste box to make a house like I did. The cardboard is so thin that you can read "Whitening Tartar Protection" right through the roof! Maybe a few more coats of paint will help, but for now I'm thinking the Crest House isn't making the grade here Amongst The Oaks.

SNOW!

Hey, check this out. We have snow in Central California! See the blue stuff on the satellite image up above? That's SNOW. In Sacramento and Stockton. I can't remember the last time it snowed here, but it's a big deal. Usually our winter storms come from the south and carry tropical moisture which is always warm, but this storm has collided with a blast of cold from Canada, so it has brought the white stuff down to our valley. What fun.

Teen1 and I first noticed it about 6:40am when we were coming home from the grocery store. I thought the rain was kind of fluffy and sure enough, it was snowflakes. There's one on her coat sleeve.

Here's what our house looked like with a few flakes in the photo. Almost as soon as it appeared, it disappeared, but I'm hoping it comes back and stays a little longer. Snow Amongst The Oaks. Amazing.

Christmas Cookies

When my girls were tiny we had a chunky board book called Christmas Cookies. I can still remember some of it:

Brrrrr, it's cold outside today, too cold to go outside and play,

so let's make cookies just for fun, Christmas cookies for everyone.

Spoons from drawers, bowls from shelves, here are aprons for ourselves.

Sift and shake, measure and pour, something something about the floor.

In go the eggs now, crack, crack, plop. Oops, I dropped one, get the mop....

and lastly

....Into the oven, bake them well. What a wonderful cookie smell.

Christmas cookies warm and sweet, Christmas cookies ready to eat.

And this is what I saw last night when I got home from work. Teen1 had made this lovely batch of Christmas cookies. And she had also made spaghetti sauce so I didn't have to cook dinner. Well done Teen1! Thank you, thank you!

Little Houses

I can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in houses. Even as a child I remember being fascinated with a friend's dollhouse and later I remember drawing houses and painting houses and sculpting houses. In high school I did many art projects involving houses. (I think my sister TravelBug has a little clay model I made of her house in 1973.) And I made this model of a Victorian house out of paper and cardboard in my senior year.

I entered it in a few art shows and got a blue ribbon at the County Fair. When I look at it now I see how lame it was, but for a 17 year old kid, I guess it's not too bad. I hand cut all those little scalloped strips for the roofing (mainly in my History class) with little fingernail scissors. It took me months to make and I even made a glass case to hold it. It still sits in a cupboard in my living room.

When we planned our house remodel I made this model of how the new house would look. I used the elevations and glued them to cardboard, then colored, cut, and glued it together. It was a great aid and reference tool as we made decisions about the details and our house actually came out pretty much like this. And this.

This end of the kitchen looks exactly like a photo I took here but now it has roses and a trellis.

So it's no surprise that I'm once again making little houses. Here is my latest glitter house. It's a little stone cottage with a thatched roof and a snowy hedge. I am having so much fun with these little houses here Amongst The Oaks. How about you? How are your Christmas projects coming along?

1971 VW Beetle

So do you recognize anything up there? It's Teen1's Volkswagen all taken apart. The Lord of the Manor is doing a restoration project on it. It all started with a little engine work....

Here is the totally rebuilt engine. He took it all the way down to the block, had it machined and a bunch of other technical stuff, then built it back up using the proper parts. Before it had some stuff that wasn't original/correct, but now it's all good.

Then he removed all the fenders, doors and hatches and started repairing and repainting the body.

Teen1 chose the original 1971 Volkswagen yellow. I think it's a good idea to keep it original.

Here it is in the spray booth with primer on the chassis! Yippee! It's getting closer and closer to being done every day.

The Lord of the Manor is even painting the wheel wells and the inside.

We are all getting excited about the bug here Amongst The Oaks. Especially Teen1!

Putz Houses, Glitter Houses

I've been wanting to make some Putz Houses or Glitter Houses for a long time. Last year I got this old one for inspiration and recently I finally made a few. I used this site for guidance, but customized them a bit. As you can see the originals had red cellophane windows, loofah trees, bright colors, and larger glitter.

I wanted mine to all be shades of gold and yellow. I had some cellophane for the windows that just happened to be yellow too. For the church I made the basic house a little larger, cut out pointed windows and added a belfry and porch. I also made more of a wall instead of a fence.

After gluing it all together and painting it comes the fun of putting on the glitter. It's so satisfying to sit whilst the family is watching television glittering away. In no time at all, you have a frosty little house to add to the neighborhood.

On this one I turned the roof the other direction and made larger windows, a central chimney, and a glass front door.

This is the first one I made and it's closest to the instructions with its three windows, picket fence and giant chimney, but however you make them they are cute, cute, cute. Imagine a bunch of them all in pastel colors. Or maybe all white and silver. Or rustic little cabins all in earth tones. You can bet I'm going to be making more of these.

Post Thanksgiving Report

So, how was your Thanksgiving? Ours was wonderful, one of our best ever. I think because we only had 15 people. I guess that's my limit; any more than that and insanity takes over. Anyway, the food was all good and hot, the company was fun, there were no fights and {Hallelujah!} no broken dishes!

The Lord of the Manor and I got up early this morning and went for a walk. (We're trying to work off the potatoes, gravy, pumpkin and pecan pie, but then we had pie for breakfast so I'm thinking maybe we need to try a little harder.) Then he went to work on Teen1's Volkswagen, and I did hostess aerobics; taking the table apart, putting chairs back, laundering the table linens, sweeping, mopping, washing the pans, etc.

I won't be going anywhere near the Mall today. Instead I'll be working on some Christmas craft projects. I'm making some Putz houses using these instructions. I also got some clear ornaments that I'm going to paint. If all goes well I'll show some of the houses tomorrow.

Place cards

I finished up the table last night with these place cards I printed. I like place cards, don't you? They look so elegant and civilized and they help everyone to their proper place without a lot of discussion. We always seat our guests as suggested by old fashioned etiquette books: the Lord of the Manor at one end, me at the other (closest to the kitchen), the female guest of honor at his right, the male guest of honor at my right, then alternate male, female until the kids end up in the middle. This can lead to starving at the ends of the table because the children rarely pass food, but somehow we make it work.

So do you use place cards? If not, how do you assign seats? We'd love to know here Amongst The Oaks.

Here's my Thanksgiving wish for you: I hope your turkey is juicy, your dressing moist, your potatoes fluffy, and your guests well matched.