Christmas 2009

We spent christmas eve and day at my parents house,

as usual my mother had decorated it so festive.

Our dinners were held at her beautiful dining room table which

she had decorated with a cute vintage christmas village designed

by Bethany Lowe. Not only do I love her name but I love the

classic and creative feel of all her work. My mom helped my nieces

to make the peppermint napkin rings which I thought matched

perfectly.

We participated in our family bread day where my aunt

makes bowls and bowls overflowing with sweet and greek

bread dough. We all make cinnamon rolls or braids and

mold our greek bread into creative and festive loaves. Karin's

boys really had fun helping...and eating the dough.

We made a candy cane shaped cinnamon braid and a

cinnamon roll christmas tree out of our sweet dough then a

teddy bear and a santa face with the greek dough. We freeze the

dough creations till christmas morning were we cook and

devour them for a scrumptious breakfast.

We also gathered on christmas eve to decorate gingerbread

houses. As usual, like carving pumpkins, I got into my design

and decorated till I looked around me and noticed that everyone

else had finished and moved on. But I am at least proud that I figured

out how to make perfect icicles. I also loved seeing how different

everybodys elses houses turned out.

We played the game that my mom's dad invented, the bell game.

Everyone but one person has a bell attached to a string, then all the

bells are placed in the center of the table. The person without a bell

has a pan lid and rolls a dice, when the dice lands on the designated

number they rush to trap as many of the bells under the pan

lid before everyone pulls their bells away. Its always so entertaining,

but seems to startle the youngest grandchild quite a bit every time.

Christmas morning was held in our 'chistmas room' (our downstairs

family room decorated in red and green)

It was fun to see the mesh/clash of boys vs. girl toys.

Boots: I gave Nora these adorable and fuzzy ones and Reece

gave me these sleek flashy ones. Thank you thank you. He's

helping me bring back skiing after a 13 year hiatus. Wish me luck.

For all the boys and kids in the family I designed and made them

each a shirt individualized to them. For my dad I made him a

'dad in a can' shirt, its been a long time saying in my family that

our dad is a lot like those cans of solutions sold on informercials that

solve every problem and fix everything... cause thats what my pops

does. Nora and Evy got shirts depicting the nicknames we have

given them, Nora Borealis and Ev-bug. Mike got a Darma initiative

symbol (swan station), Ricky got a movie poster for the actor that

shares his name 'Richard Burton', Andrew is a 'Wii-kend Warrior',

John has 'Pirates vs Ninjas', Ben has a lego 'jedi in training', and

Will's was a 'baby ninja'.

For the big girls I got them all foot soak packages for a spa day.

The foot soak is designed by my dear friends' talented mother

the foot soaks powder thickens up to the consistency of applesauce

when mixed with warm water and then dissolves back to water when

the bath cools and you sprinkle in the dissolving chemical. So cool,

and smells so nice. The foot soak also has components of the ingredient

found in advil to relieve aches and pains. We soaked, filed, and painted

while watching 'Julie and Julia' and 'Confessions of a Shopaholic'.

After we did some crafting, we decorated brushed steel message

boards, and made some more yo-yo headbands. A Great Girls Day.