Showing posts with label Christmas traditions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas traditions. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Great Christmas Books to Share

I wanted to take a minute to share a few of our family's favorite Christmas books. Reading the kids Christmas stories is something I love and I know they love it too.
A book that has special memories for me is "The Shiniest Star". My grandmother read it to my mother when she was little, and then my mother read it to me and my siblings. That original book was pretty much worn out and fragile and I wouldn't have even wanted to ask to borrow it for fear of what my kids might to do it. So last year my Mom had the great idea to look it up online and see if "The Shiniest Star" was still available anywhere. (by the way, what did we do before the internet?) We were so excited to see there is now a reproduction of the original! So "The Shiniest Star" tradition is now being passed down to my own kids. :-) Here is a picture from inside the book.
Another favorite, and it too is one I loved as a child, (can you tell I'm big on nostalgia?), is a version of "The Night Before Christmas"
that is illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa. I like anything illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa, especially books she did through the 50's and 60's! I bought a reproduction of this at Barnes and Noble a few years ago and unfortunately the color isn't quite as saturated as the original, but it will have to do until I can buy an original 1961 version from ebay. My favorite picture in the book is of "the children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads" The picture looks like pure heaven. I couldn't find a picture to show you- sorry.

Well, my fingers are getting too cold to type since it is only 63 degrees in here. We didn't want to start a fire until morning since it's kind of a pain. Our goal is to try not to run our heater at all this winter to keep our bills from that evil Idaho Power from being so high ;-) We had a similar goal this summer and we only ran the AC a handful of times. In the meantime, I think I may be seeing my breath by morning!

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Of popcorn chains and pre-lit trees


This weekend the kids and I worked on getting a popcorn chain made to put on the tree. Every year Heidi insists on doing it and every year I forget how time consuming it is and agree to the idea. Even Reagan helped us out this year! Hours later, after we had sewn and eaten as much popcorn as we could possibly stand, we tied every ones length into one continuous chain. This project was a great accompaniment to our other time consuming project of "let's clip all the original lights off our fake tree" project. That actually took about 6 hours with the combined efforts of Joel, Taylor and I. Taylor even has a blister! That's what we get for buying a fake pre-lit tree I guess. (Why did I expect the lights on that tree to last any better than the cheap lights you buy in a box, you ask? Good question.....) So what I've learned this weekend? Popcorn chains- a lot of work, but worth it. Pre-lit trees- not so much.