Christmas Crafting

 I'm still getting caught up sharing the things I worked on during the end of last year during the Christmas crafting season.  

As chronic readers may know, I always make handmade ornaments for friends and family each year and this year I was inspired by a dual desire to use up some of the very pretty and sparkly but awful to knit and crochet with ribbon yarn that is in my stash and to do something with the shells I picked up when my friend Kristin and I went to Savannah.  I considered a variety of things but wound up going with a simple tassel based angel.  Each one is just a touch different but they all have the same components.

Still on the Christmas tree front, I was so excited to get this beautiful handmade spiky ornament from my sister this year for Christmas.  My mom made a bunch of these when she was first married (fifty years ago now) and I've always loved them.  It's wonderful to have a new generation of them made by my sister.

While at my sister's for Christmas day, we had a scavenger hunt for the kids to find their stockings.  One of the steps was that each family member had to build a lego gingerbread person.  I got very very excited by this and had a great time decorating mine.   I think they were designed to be tree ornaments, but I liked mine so much I know have it hanging year round on my car mirror.

Finally, I'm a big lover of nativity scenes, and I decided that my "main" one needed some dinosaurs.  I mean, I pretty much think everything benefits by the addition of dinosaurs and I feel like they would fit in well with the other nativity animals.  I ordered some paint-your-own ceramic dinosaurs from Etsy, and then as a Christmas craft project, Brett and I each painted one to add to my exisiting nativity.  They were pretty good size wise I think.

I painted the t-rex and Brett painted the brachiosaur.

I think they make great additions to the nativity.  The dinosaurs came in a set of six, so we'll paint two more next year.  It's really an eclectic assembled set.  The base set and hut were a gift from my mom when I got my very first apartment about 25 years ago.  And of course the dinosaurs were just added this year.  But the three angels are much much older.  They belonged to my great grandmother.  She was married in 1926, and while I have no specific info on these pieces, my guess is that they come from sometime in the mid twentieth century, 1930-1950 maybe?  Maybe next year I'll see if I can find amy makers marks or anything on them.  In any case all together it's pretty special to me.  Happy (very late) Christmas!