scenes from a nativity

as a PK, you can be assured that i have a nativity set or five in my house.  a few i keep up year round, the rest only get see the light of advent.



this is the nativity set that my parents have given me piecemeal since i've been married.  it is a fenton glass set, which were made in the 1990s/early 2000s.  each year the company came out with a different piece - first the holy family, then shepherds, wise men, angels, animals (i'm unsure of the order).  my mom has the complete set that some day i will receive.  this set resides in my china cupboard, middle shelf, where everyone can see it.

incidentally, that's our wedding cake topper in front of it.  it has a serendipitous story to tell, maybe some day.




this is the candle nativity i bought through the vermont country store.  the angels were all bought separately so the set is made up of 4 candle sets.  the blue angel and the little angels i got this year.  very vintage.




holy family, batman!

my pap painted this ceramic set many many years ago.  my mom brought it out during the holidays when i was growing up, and after we moved it sat, unloved, in a box with other unloved, forgotten christmas decorations.  several years ago i rescued it during the purge, and it sat in a curio case until a couple months ago when we redid the computer room and gave the curio to grams.  i didn't want to put the set away so i set it out on my bookcase.  the boy has since reclaimed the bookcase as a "level" in his pretend mario game that he has established in that room.

however, i had no clue that catwoman and the penguin were present at jesus' birth.  i guess the four gospels let that little bit out of the christmas story.   and that's how the easter bunny got involved with jesus.

oh, this is just an aside, but i can't resist adding this photo (before it gets lost in my flickr stream forever:



hubby's grandpa made this jacob's ladder toy for hubby when he was little.  there's a wooden notched block that flips over the bars.  the boy inherited it and somehow it found its way to the computer room.  it is now what i call "the owlery" (me and my harry potter addiction!).  perhaps the owls (and the bald eagle) also delivered good news of the christ child's birth?

when the boy was a toddler we got him the fisher price nativity set.  it was a nativity set we knew he could play with and not harm.  every year we'd get it out from the closet and set it up under the coffee table in the living room.  the coffee table is gone now, but we brought the set out for the little ones to play with.  they seem to like the palm trees.  i got tired of finding its pieces scattered around the living/dining rooms so i found a basket to put them in for the remainder of the season.  and then i'll have to find the figures which i'm pretty soon got mixed with their other little people toys.

we bought another set and gave it to the boy's nursery class, in memory of a little boy who died from meningitis.  that set sits on a window sill in the kiddos' sunday school room, where other children play with it too.  

we have a couple other nativity sets that i didn't put out this year.  one is a blue mother of pearl ceramic set that people from my old church gave us when we got married.  every year that set was under our christmas tree, surrounded by deer and little houses.  and yes, baby jesus makes his appearance christmas eve/day - he is absent during advent, and mary and joseph admire an empty manger.  i haven't had this nativity set out for a couple of years.  maybe next year it'll make a return appearance!

the boy also has a small hard rubber nativity scene that his sunday school teacher from hubby's old church gave him many years ago.  i forgot to get it out this year (along with MM's white lighted tree, which also sat in the boy's room).  i surmise the set got lost in the knickknacks box in the closet.

this year mom got out a nativity set that they'd gotten as a gift from the same people who made my set.  it is a painted ceramic native american nativity set, with bears, coyotes and buffalo instead of camels and sheep and cattle.  it is a beautiful set.  mom got it out for the boy to enjoy, and he loves it.  mom said after the holidays she would pack it up and send it over for the boy to keep in his room (this set hadn't seen the light of day for almost 20 years too).

we also have nativity tree ornaments, including a peanuts nativity (lucy is mary, charlie brown is joseph), plastic a-frame style ornaments i'd gotten as a kid in church, a glass and mirror ornament that i no longer hang becos the figures are loose, and an ancient tear drop ornament set that mom got down in fortress when i was little.

yeppers, we gots lotsa nativity sets.

hide the pickle

our family has many traditions for christmas.  we decorate the tree and house over the thanksgiving holidays.  we take hubby's mammaw out to eat and around to see the christmas lights the weekend before christmas.  for years i got the boy a chocolate advent calendar.  we go to christmas eve services at my church.

one tradition that started with my folks, that i carried on to my kids, was the game "hide the pickle".  my mom had a glass pickle ornament, and she would hide it in the tree branches for me to find.  i never got an extra present for finding it, it was just fun trying to find it.

when the boy was old enough to understand, i played the game with him.  as he grew up, i hid it higher into the tree.  i never waited until christmas to hide it - he found it not long after the tree was up.  last year he tried to hide it from me and hubby, and made us hunt for it.

this year, we chose not to put up the glass ornaments becos i was afraid the kiddos would tug at the branches and break them.  thus, no glass pickle.

i remembered the christmas ornament kit i got from knitpicks last year, and they had a pattern for a knitted pickle.  so thanksgiving holiday, i set out to knit a pickle.  it sat for several days until last night, when i noticed it sitting abandoned on the buffet, and i resolved to finish knitting it.




knit with knit picks palette on size 1.5 DPNs, the pattern is pretty simple and straightforward.  after increasing for several rows, there is a 11 row pattern that is repeated three times.  about every third row of the pattern is either increased or decreased in stitches, creating the bumping appearance of a pickle.  then there are several rows of decreasing, to taper the top of the pickle and create a loop for hanging. very easy.  the yarn, i wasn't too fond of.  a bit splitty and especially slippy on my signature DPNs, it's why i quit knitting the pickle in the first place.  if i ever knit another one, i'd look for another yarn that wasn't so splitty.

so far the boy doesn't know the pickle is there.  i wonder how long it will take him to find it?  it's not well hidden.


we got a bit of a snow surprise.  i knew we were suppose to have snow squalls, i just didn't know the squalls were going to sit over the river valley.

the snow started as flurries in the afternoon, then started to lay when the boy came home from school.  by the time UPS delivered the kitchen island, there was nearly 2 inches of snow on the porch:






  by 9 pm we had about 4 or 5 inches of snow:






the boy had a two hour delay for school.  i don't have to say what i thought about that.  :P

decorations

since the kiddos are more mobile this year, i pared down my christmas decorations.

our biggest obstacle would be the tree.  i knew the kiddos would probably want to play with it, so we moved the tree from next to the steps to the front window.  no glass orbs this year, no vintage ornaments, only my snoopy ornaments and some personalized ones for the kids.  we put part of the safety fencing around it.

at first, we toyed with not putting the tree up at all.  we thought about putting up MM's ceramic tree on the buffet, but that seemed so sad.  i was really looking forward to taking the kids' pictures in front of our tree.  plus, i wanted to show off my blue ribbon tree skirt, albeit it behind a plastic fence.  so we decided to put up the tree and forgo the breakables.  our tree looks woefully spartan, but the lights are colorful, so that helps.



the boy gets to put the angel on top every year.  this year he had to have some help from daddy to do it.




truly a charlie brown tree this year.




freddie was the first to discover the tree and show interest in it.




petunia was more interested in her hair brush and mr. bean bobble head doll than she was in the tree.



the kiddos now have christmas stockings!  here's petunia's:



knit with brown sheep spun worsted in bouganvillea, plymouth galway colornep in sage tweed and patons wool merino in winter white, petunia's stocking is fresh and girly.




look ma!  no jogs!


freddie bean's stocking:



knit with patons wool merino in bright red and winter white, and i think the green tweed is a chunky plymouth.  both stocking patterns came from knit simple's knitting workshops.  pattern is pretty simple.  always wanted to knit socks but the tiny DPNs scare you?  try knitting a stocking - same principle, only on a larger scale.

the boy has a crocheted christmas stocking, that a lady from my church made when he was a baby.  she doesn't knit or crochet much anymore, which is why i thought i'd better knit the kiddos stockings.


the only other decorations i put up were wreaths on the doors, a plastic snow man head on the lamppost outside, icicle lights around the front porch roof, electric candles in the windows and my christmas candles.




the boy, wearing frosty's hat.  here he is, actually in the hat:




i love vintage christmas candles.  i got these at vermont country store over the past few years.












these candles remind me of the ones we had sitting in the middle of our tables in kindergarten.  now those candles were the old ones.  i do keep my eye out for the vintage ones at flea markets and antique stores, but no doubt many of them didn't survive over the years.


a new decoration for this year is the candy cane and the ribbon candy.  it's from hammonds candies - supposedly they make the best candy canes in the world.  i'm not a big fan of hard candy, but i thought the ribbon candy would look so pretty in a dish.  i also have other candy canes from purity candy that i decorate with but i have no clue where i hoarded them.



i love decorating for the christmas holidays, although it can be time consuming and a pain.  paring down this year made it sinfully easy.  putting away the decorations after the holidays will be a snap too!

house of gaud

the decorating wars have begun.

every christmas we decorate with candles in the windows and icicle lights. last year we added a rough sled with skates, and i used to have a wrought iron basket for fake christmas flowers, and it also hid the extension cord for the lights. i like a clean, simple house and with the style of our house (old farmstyle) the lights look really attractive.

for years we were the only house on the block with christmas lights. our next door neighbor has regular lights hanging from their porch, but they also use them all year round so i don't know if it's fair to include them. anyway, their lights are nice.

last year our neighbors across the street hung up icicle lights and garland around their railing. the house is made up of 2 doubles, so naturally the lights don't match. one set was white, and the other set was colored. this is why i couldn't live in a half a double - my neighbor would have to match my half of the house.

the house catty corner from us downstreet had candles and a light up santa last year. this year they upped the ante by keeping the candles on all year (expensive light bill), put lighted garland across the front and put matching sleds by each door (this house is also half a double.) they also have lighted deer in their side yard and santa is now nowhere to be seen. the display would be really pretty if the neighbor on the other side had candles in his window too. i joked to hubby that our neighbors must have seen our sleds and then copied the look for their porch too.

the house of gaud award goes to our new neighbors across the street who live in the side where the porch people lived. they put up icicle lights and wound their porch railing with garland and these obnoxious flashing big stars. i call the family the people we never see becos, honestly, i don't know who lives there becos we never see them (they use their back door but i never see them get their mail, clean around their house, etc). they must have put the display up last night when i was knitting becos when i came home here were these flashing stars. i don't know when they turned them off but they were still on when i went to bed (midnight). i hate flashing lights. i know someone people like them but i don't.

not to toot my horn, but i still think our house looks the nicest on the block.