Christmas Week

The Adorables were with us yesterday.  When they entered the house the first thing they noticed was the hearth covered with wrapped presents.  Ethan's little face became a study in happy absorption as he asked, "Which one is for me?"  Bethy, though, didn't ask.  She went directly to the hearth and studied the labels, finally announcing, "That one is mine.  I see the 'B' on it."  I did not dispute this, as her tone was not a question, and she needed no reassurance.  A woman who knows how to get the job done!

We moved from the house to the studio, where Ethan climbed into my lap to make more Christmas ornaments at one of the work tables, and Bethy chose to look into every nook and cranny of the studio (there are many!).  They can recite the lines to "Santa Claus is coming to town."  We do it as a call-and-response:

Me:  "You better watch out. . ."
Adorables: "You better not cry. . ."
Me: "Better not pout. . ."
Adorables: "I'm telling you why. . ."
All Together: "Santa Claus is coming to town."

This through the entire song!  They both went to great lengths to assure me that they are on the "Nice" list, that they have both been much too good to be on the "Naughty" list.

I think Christmas Day will be the loveliest day we've spent in a long, long time!

Week Seven

I am now a little more than seven weeks past hip replacement surgery, and it could be that life is returning to normal (whatever that is!).  I walk unaided some of the day ("slow and deliberate; good," my doctor said on Tuesday), and I occasionally bend far enough to pick things up that have fallen to the floor.  This is still not easy, but it is coming.

I have been (most irregularly) to the studio, and I still find that to be my favorite haunt.  Yesterday the Adorables were with us after school, and I took them studio-ing with me.  It was a nice experience for all three of us— until Ethan had a Code Brown in his pull ups and we had to go inside to the changing table.  When I opened the door to the outside I saw (with horror) that it had been sleeting while we were tucked so cozily in the studio, and before I could call to him to be careful, Ethan had slipped on the ice and fallen.  I was slow-motion walking so I didn't fall, too, but Bethy, ever the agile and graceful sprite, was sliding along in her boots and enjoying herself immensely.  Granddad came out and rescued Ethan and warned me (quite unnecessarily) to be careful.  I was wishing he would throw me a rope and just pull me across the patio to the kitchen door. . .

The studio is the Adorables' favorite place to play.  Bethy wore a beautiful organdy apron trimmed in pink, a gift from Jill, and she called it her "princess skirt" (anything smacking of the royal life is grist for her mill).  There are so many interesting things in the studio that she had no problem keeping occupied; cork stoppers, empty wooden thread spools, tons of paper and pencils or crayons, her own little desk (which had been her dad's and mine as little children), beads, buttons— and when she is really really good, she can organize the pins in one of the pincushions (too many to count).  And Ethan has cars there and a small drawing board with an racing oval attached to it that he and I designed one day.  There are small lacing boards, too, that fascinate him almost as much as the shiny beads.  There are even blocks stored on their tea cart!  When all else fails, he curls into himself and rests his head on a stuffed animal.

Today they are with us the entire day, as school is cancelled in Cherokee County due to the icy conditions, and both parents are working.  They are napping now, giving my tired voice a rest from reading book after book.  When I was a child, the rare treat of having an adult read me a book was simply heavenly, and I love having them in my lap and helping to turn pages as I pass that treat on to them.  Charles laughs at the physicality of my reading(I am drawing swoops in the air, changing voices, and generally becoming one with the story), but Bethy and Ethan are rapt.  It's a good thing I'm not reading to him— how could I put any personality into a book on the American Revolution, or Jimmy Carter's White House Diary?

Collecting

"The" season is upon us, and being a list-maker, at the top of that page of "To-Dos" is to remove the gourds from the mantel to make room for the Dickens Village.  Once the Village is in place, I start to think like a real Christmas Person.

I am concerned with all the "stuff" in our lives.  I was looking at the pine cupboard in the dining room, thinking about removing pieces of the ironstone creamer collection to make room for Christmas decorating.  We received a lovely gift from Dennis and it would be perfect in a corner of a cupboard shelf.  And the replaced creamers?  Or the chocolate pots?  Boxed away, of course, in the company of so many other boxes.

I have been a collector since I could remember.  My first love was small boxes, where I kept my childhood treasures.  Teapots followed— this was a direct influence of my grandmother, the Irish link of Mother's family.  My aunt Nancy Cile had Christmas dishes, and I wanted that special dining experience for my own family (which I managed, over a period of years of collecting).  And books?  My mother was the book worm who encouraged us from an early age to have our own personal libraries of favorites . . .

I wonder now if collecting is becoming a thing of the past, a relic from a time when homes were expected to graciously accommodate the various interests and collections of its inhabitants, when these habits could spill over without the need to be Better-Homes-and-Gardens neat at all times.  The perfectly-in-place house always makes me suspect that a very dull group of people live there, and when I am in these spic-and-span homes, I find myself looking for the collection that gives identity to an individual, some small clue to the interests of the family in the house.  Today's open floor plans don't lend themselves to corners where children's crayons and books are stored or wall space for displaying drawings, photographs or a shelf of rare antique books.  Where in the world would we put an old egg carton that cradled a little rock collection?

Which makes me think twice about the pine cupboard and the creamers.  This house is smaller than the one we left in Knoxville, less wall space, not enough book cases or closets.  There are boxes and boxes of pictures (many of my own making) that I have no place to hang, so I have not hung anything yet!  Is it possible that, at the end of things, a collector should not downsize, but UPsize?  And how do you take care of the UPsized home as you age?  A dear sister-in-law one time told me, wistfully, that her ideal home was a large concrete-floored room with a drain in the center of it . . .

What a list of questions without answers this is!  How do I solve this very knotty problem of re-forming the habits of a lifetime?  Is it even possible, at this stage, to aspire to change?  Maybe I should not go antiquing any more, not be lured by the gentle, classic shapes of creamers and white china.  *Sigh*  Glance away from beautiful tea pots.  *Double Sigh*  Never again ask to see the leather-bound books in the glass cases . . . Use the fragile chocolate pots until they are all broken and the problem of preserving them is solved by simple attrition—

Aaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!! (to quote Snoopy.)

Is there a support group "out there" for collectors wishing to go Cold Turkey?

Item two on today's list:  Bring the Dickens Village from the basement closet and become a Christmas Person.

Item three on today's list:  Think about everything else Tomorrow.  After all, tomorrow is . . . . (thank you, Scarlett).

Little Ornaments!

I was challenged by my son to find something creative to do with a bag of wine corks.  My initial thought was that they would make good trivets, laid on their side and glued to a piece of plywood, trimmed out on the sides with narrow wood.  They were not all one size, however, so they did not lie in a neat, level line that would be safe for resting hot pots or plates on the surface.  Fixing that problem meant actually dragging out a saw and miter box and doing serious work.  Serious grunge work.  I was looking for something with more gratification and less work.

Moving on, I thought about the challenge of the corks for months.  Last week I finally decided to just jump in and make a Christmas ornament with one.  It was awful.  I, however, had been challenged to make something creative, and I kept slugging away at those corks with whatever fabrics and threads I could find.  Eventually a lovely tree ornament emerged from the piles that had started forming on my worktable.  This morning I engaged C3's services to hold the cork still while I stapled a lining in place, then I began to decorate over that lining.

The result was a small box of eight wine-cork ornaments for the Adorables and their Christmas Tree.  Some of the efforts:

If I could have found my bag of foil candy wrappers, this would have been a cinch!  The ends of the corks are the hardest thing to decorate.  Sparkly paint might have worked, but cork always looks like cork, so I was trying to cover it.  Unfortunately, I could locate only one green wrapper!  Everything else was done with fabric and thread.  This is Mr. Fuzzy-Cork:

This is the Snow Queen:

These little felted guys came originally from The Container Store.  They were a little plain, so I added wings and put Ethan and Bethy's names on the tall hats . . .

And this is my interpretation of a tree that might have grown in Whoville:

Enjoy!  And Merry Christmas!