Christmishaps Part 1

Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, and it is always the perfect time of year for Christmas projects! From gifts to goodies to decorations, the Christmas season is always busy busy busy! This year, we tacked on a few extra projects, which made things a little extra busy...

Normally, after thanksgiving we start decorating. Before November's over the house is covered in red and green bows and ribbons, garland and lights, and of course the tree! This year, however, my sister returned from college with a particularly nasty flu, and we are all sad to say she did not take it back. From the time she left to the time she came home for Christmas break, the whole family was up to our noses in tissues. Mom got it the worst, sick in bed for what seemed like forever! Of course we all recovered, but not before it was well into the Christmas season and our tree wasn't even set up yet!

When my sister got back after finals, it was easier to get things moving. We took everything down from the attic and spread it all out in the garage. Among the many boxes of Nutcrackers and Angles was a project my mom had started many years ago when we'd first moved into our house. See, the front of our house and our front yard are both on the bigger side, so it's both difficult and expensive to put up lights and decorations outside. The first year we'd moved in, Mom had come up with the amazing idea to use tomato cages covered in lights and garland as trees to put in the yard. She'd never finished the project though so I'd picked it up. The more we worked with it though, the more I realized why she'd given up on the project earlier. It was only weeks till Christmas and with family coming over, I wanted something to make the house look nice. Mom suggested we just decorate the porch.

On our porch we have three large pillars. With the lights and garland we already had we figured maybe we could decorate those. And so we started. First thing to do was string the lights on the garland! Wait... Back up. First first thing to do was untangle the lights. Then we could put them on the pillars. That was an adventure all in itself. We started by stapling on end of the garland to the wood porch roof at the top of the pillar while I held the rest in a bundle over my shoulder. Then while mom made sure each piece was in place, I went in circle after circle around the pillar, squeezing between wall and ladder to get around it. We couldn't stop laughing the whole time! That is... until we realized that of the strings of lights we'd brought out to use, only one still worked, the one we had up. the other strings had shorts in them, and the one we'd put up was so dim we couldn't put anything brighter up against it. We needed new lights. And fast. It was just before Home Depot closed that we ran in to find lights. All the Christmas stuff was being taken down everywhere. The last of it was in a little corner by the door. After almost thirty minutes of searching through every shelf, we found the last three boxes of lights, and thank goodness they were just barely long enough for what we needed. We happily hurried home with our purchase, but then had to unstring all the lights from the first pillar to put up the new ones.

It was several hours in the dark before we finally finished putting up each string of lights. (Mom had insisted we do it at night so we could...see what we were doing...?)

We stood back and looked at our work, and Mom turned to me "Ashley, we should go back to Walmart and get that wreath before it's gone." I agreed, so at two in the morning, we hopped in the car and drove down to Walmart, where they were busy taking down all the Christmas stuff. We just barely found our wreath and a nice looking poinsettia to finish off the look. Over all, we did good for one night. And we had fun. That's the most important part!

Charming Denim

About three months ago, my mom made four denim bags for my cousins. They were cute tote bags to carry their Bibles and notebooks in for church. She used old jeans and skirts to put these bags together, and the finished products were adorable. There was a ballerina bag with a tutu frill around the top. A robot bag that was absolutely to die for. A pink bag with flowers, made out of one pink jeans that, ten years ago, had been my absolute favorites. And an elegant pink and white bag for the oldest. All of them were bags I would have paid good money to own for myself. They were beautiful. Each bag had it's owner's name embroidered on the top. My mom got a fancy embroidery machine for Christmas a few years back, and she loves using it! She used it for these bags and has been exploring different uses for it ever since. When she saw me admiring my cousin's bags, she offered to make one for me. I had a raggedy pair of shorts that were ready to be recycled, but I didn't want to give them up just yet. She said "Oh, we can make a bag out of that! It'll be cute!" For the next several days she and I looked through hundreds of designs, trying to pick out the perfect one for my bag. I finally convinced her that I liked the picture of a girl, standing in the wind with the word "Charm" written next to her. She agreed that it looked very me, and began to plug the design into the embroidery program.

This machine is fantastic. All you have to do is put your design into the computer, send it to the machine, and the machine does all the work. Changing the colors is really the only thing you have to do manually, so it's nice to put it on and let it run while you do other things. This is exactly what my mom did when she began to embroider the lady on my bag. Every now and then I'd poke my head in to check on it, but I had other things to do as well. My grandparents were coming over for supper and I was helping mom prepare. It was a busy night that flew by in a rush. By the next morning, I'd almost forgotten about the little embroidered lady.

I was in my room just before lunch when I heard mom and grandma talking. "It's hardly noticeable." I heard grandma saying.

"But she'll be so disappointed!" Mom's voice answered. I walked out and smiled at them both.

"Morning!" I went and sat down on the chair nearest the cutting table where Mom and Grandma both stood. I hardly noticed my jeans, folded discretely under my mother's hand. Both women turned and looked at me. Grandma smiled and greeted in turn, moving to sit in another chair across the room. Mom still stood at the table. She greeted me as well but the room was obviously tense. I looked between them both and asked "What happened?" Obviously something had. Mom smiled a little awkwardly, the way she does when she's trying not to laugh. She walked towards the kitchen calling "Nothing!" I was surprised, but noticed my jeans and decided to take a look anyway.

"Is this my bag?" I asked. Mom hurried back towards the table.

"No. No! Shoo!" she exclaimed but I'd already opened the jeans to expose the finished embroidered lady. Mom looked upset, and tried to explain "I didn't have the right colors, but that looked close enough when I compared them!" She'd gotten the shadowing too dark, both under the skirt and under her arm. I stared at the design for a minute before looking up and smiling a little.

"It's okay, mom. I'll just tell everyone she's French."