O Christmas Tree

I've definitely been collecting things to show you even if I haven't been able to post.

The weekend after we got back from DC, we went with my sister and the girls to Longwood Gardens to see their trees. Fabulous as always! (The girls are three and a half now.) We saw so many trees with unusual color combos. This one was (advertised as) "Tiffany blue" and had some copper accents. Another one was red and lemon yellow--it worked!

Then we put up our own trees. The snowman tree, last year (because we were heading to Florida) we bought a new artificial tree--black tinsel!--we got it back out this year because I was too sick to want to wander around tree lots. We didn't put it up until the Monday before Christmas when I was shamed into it at work. The dude helped so much over this period. He doesn't usually love all the Christmas brouhaha, but he really pitched in, buying presents, decorating, cooking, baking. I found a good one!

This is the handmade tree. Almost all the ornaments were stitched (or made) by me (there are a few by you too!). When we were at Winterthur, there was a tree of needlepoint ornaments that rotated. (I don't know how I managed to miss a photo of it!) The dude said we'll have to get one of those for this tree. Ha ha!

My collection of Sandy Cozzolino ornaments, growing slowly. I posted this photo on her Facebook page, and she said two in the middle, the Santa with holding the tree and the teddy bear Santa, are among the earliest ones she designed!

I did get the trees for the mugs that I set out to do over Thanksgiving break. I bought that huge gold tree at Target. (It is in there straight; I don't know what went wrong with this picture.) A fun little vignette. I shared it on Facebook and lots of people have these mugs. I think they might be looking for trees to stick inside during the sales!

For my aunt's December 27th birthday, we headed to Winterthur to see their trees. Although I should have photographed the needlepoint tree, I took this one instead. For the past 30 years, Winterthur has had a dried flower tree. All of the flowers are grown and preserved on the property and saved for this tree, which was HUGE. I think you can tell if you look at some of the flowers, like the sunflowers or the hydrangea. Pretty amazing!

I hope you were able to enjoy lots of lovely Christmas trees--if that's your thing. I do love the sparkly lights in this dark time of year.

Sonambulent

I'm exhausted today. I don't know why, really. On Friday, we took my MIL to Winterthur. They make a big deal of pronouncing it Winter-ter. But if we're doing the Germanic thing, shouldn't it be Vinter-ter? I'm going to keep on saying Winter*th*ur until they explain themselves. Anyway, on the "Elegant Entertaining" tour of the house, the guide walked us into a room and asked what the first thing we noticed was. Someone said that the theme of the room was "Washington." Since the guide had been heavy on the themes of the rooms, I figured that was the right answer. But what I noticed were the mourning samplers. She did point those out, but how smart would I have looked if I actually said it first. Anyway, there is a whole conservation program there, and I was thinking maybe I have found what I want to do when I grow up: conserve and preserve textiles. Since, you know, I didn't really have any other plans for my future. The requirements would practically necessitate getting a whole new B.A. I'm not sure I can take 4 chemistry classes and work full time. And don't forget the last time I printed a black and white photograph was in 1989, and I probably couldn't pass a drawing class if my life depended on it. At least I have 8 units of art history! I should do some informational interviewing before I try to schedule organic chemistry.

On Saturday, we moved my sister to her new place. Um, note to self: avoid helping people move who have more than one staircase. Oh, I felt the burn.

On Sunday, the dude had to work on his library school paper so I took his mom to Wegman's for lunch. We bought some fancy stuff. Then it was on to Lowes for fertilizer and a spreader (boy howdy it was exciting). We got to Waterloo Gardens about an hour before they shut and picked out two tomato plants, some thyme, basil, rosemary, and oregano. Now I just have to find the sunny spot in the yard. It will just be a container garden on account of all the bunnies.

I did get some work in on Enchanted Alphabet. I'll try to remember to photograph it so I'm not talking in the abstract all the time.