Christmas in July: selecting a theme

Today is the last day of July. It is hot here in Oklahoma.
Maybe that is why I am thinking about the holidays.
Maybe it is because it is my grandbaby's birthday and she is four states away. I was thinking that hers is the last birthday celebration until after New Year's in our immediate family.
Maybe it is because we have been in celebration mode for a cool minute.
Maybe it is because there are "Christmas in July" sales in the paper and on the radio.
Maybe I should be ashamed to be thinking about (and blogging about) the holidays for the second time this year.
Whatever the reason, I just love the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's so much that I think about them even when they are months away. I have been thinking of Christmas so much that I have already decided upon a theme for this year.
The theme will be (drum roll, please!) Storybook Christmas!
A few years ago. my sister's house was on the tour of homes. Her first grandchild's birth was just a few month's away and the decorator that helped her came up with the idea using nursery items throughout the house. One tree even had old storybooks opened on branches to colorful vintage illustrations.  I loaned silver rattles and baby china to the cause. The theme was just nostalgic enough to capture my imagination.
I went home and promptly hung snowflake ornaments I had collected for years over the snow village on my mantle to resemble a baby's mobile, since my own first grandbaby was just a few months old.
I also hung angel ornaments at various heights in the breakfast room windows over the nativity in a nod to the tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and also as something of a mobile display I could show to the baby whenever she came to visit.
That's as far as I went to embrace this theme. This year, though, that all came back to me as I considered that same baby starting first grade this year.
Last year, in kindergarten, she worked with alphabet and numbers since she was learned to use both to read and add and subtract. She also loves reading storybooks... so I am thinking...what about little vignettes set up to mimic what is on the pages of her favorite books.
Sounds like a lot of work, yes?
Ah, but I have planned so far ahead I have time.
The planning ahead helps with the collection of items to use in wreaths and on mantles. And on the tree.
I've used themes before:
one year we decorated around my baby daughter's snowbabies.
Another year we used snowmen and women.
Some day, I plan to use a nutcracker theme.
For this year, though, I am going for the storybook theme.
I just hope there is a happy ending.

the little birthday girl

Tomorrow is the 6th birthday of the darling little painter in the photos above. Turning six has been a big deal for her. We have been celebrating for a month and in earnest for a solid week.
Her painting birthday party was a big hit/

There was a dinner with her aunts two days later followed by the launch of a floating lantern in honor of our birthday girl. There've been cupcakes and songs and cards. At the left, she is with one of her aunts and the Art teacher Barbie she picked out as her gift. The Barbie came with paints for canvas and the Barbie's hair. It seems art teachers favor color all over the place.
The birthday girl likes color, too.
She also likes animals. Her family. Dancing. Reading. Her friends.
She left for California this morning, headed to Disneyland with her big sister and her mom and her maternal grandparents.
I miss her already.
Guess we'll have to do more celebrating when she gets back!

This Saturday

This Saturday there was:
some laundry
some movie watching
some napping
some watermelon eating
and a bit of gardening
game playing
lively discussion
dinner out with the baby daughter and her beau
who met us bearing Disney princess ballerinas
for our little almost six year old darling.
All told, it was a wonderfully wonderful Saturday. I could use more like it!

A fabulous painting birthday party

Last Thursday evening there was a fabulous birthday party held on the Main Street Art studio of Ms. April Jones. Now Ms. April Jones is a talented and creative woman and a long time family favorite.  We all just love her, for many reasons, not the least of which is that she is just enormously fun to be around.
It should be no surprise then, that the party at her art studio was as much fun as she!
Her beautiful daughter and capable assistant, Larson, was there to assist. Her husband, the handsome and dutiful Mike Jones brought aprons by.
All of the young guests (and a few old(er) ones) painted trees with birds in them.
 

It went like this:
April had painted bare trees on each canvas. Each guest was given a canvas on which they painted blue sky over the tree, completely filling the canvas but not painting so heavily that the tree was obscured.

The Ms. April demonstrated to the young (and old) artists that by drawing a lower case "b" or the number "9" one had the basic shape of a bird to work with.
The choice of color and number of birds was up to the painter.
There were red birds and blue birds, polka dotted birds and striped birds. Some of the birds were very detailed and others less so.
As I was helping my sister corral our almost one-year-old great nephew, I did not paint.  I did have a front row seat to the creative process(es) which was/were amazing.




When everyone was finished, Ms. April took up the easels and laid the works of art out on her tables to reveal that they all fit together to create, collectively, one gigantic tree full of birds. (See, I told you she was fabulous!)

We finished up with the birthday girl opening her gifts. Does it sound wild?! It was; but in a good way. Does it sound fun? It was; in every way!
Do I want to have my next birthday party at Ms. April's studio?
I sure do!
 

tangled tea party

 

Last night we launched a floating lantern to commemorate the G'baby's upcoming sixth birthday Tangled-style. Today, we followed the launch with a lunch menu developed with the movie in mind.

Dessert was served at a separate table featuring a basket of apples in case the noble steed Maximus came by the visit, snuggly duckling candies and little luminaries burning all around.
Braided bread sticks and oatmeal scotchies and fruit salad was the simple fare to follow a hearty lunch of crudités, roast chicken, and corn on the cob.
The birthday girl's Aunt Amy was happy with the festivities and so was the birthday girl herself

reading to emma

 I've spent a good deal of time over the last almost six years reading to my G'baby. It's one of our favorite things to do. Almost every time we are together, we spend some time reading. These days, she reads to me.

That she likes books makes me very happy.

an empty cup

 

I was carrying the cup pictured above into my office (the one without the lid.) My baby daughter gave it to me for my birthday and since then it has become my favorite. As I set it down on my desk, thinking of what to fill it with as I started a busy day, I had an interesting thought.
What if I filled my mind, my day, my attitude as deliberately as I fill my cup.
If I opt for coffee, I have choices. These days there are more varieties than I can count. I can add creamer or sweetener or I can drink it black. The same with tea. I do not put anything in my cup that I don't like or want. I don't allow anyone else to put anything in my cup that I don't like or want. So why do I allow my day to be filled, often, with things I don't like or want?
Some of it is unavoidable but much of what goes in is up to me. How I deal with what comes into my life is completely up to me.

Brands and strengths, how much, how many. It's all up to me with beverages. Why not with the other stuff. Not a novel idea. Such is the stuff of many devotionals and blog posts elsewhere. It is the topic of articles and interviews and talk shows. I've read them, heard them, pondered them, mulled them, mused over them. Today I am seeking to put them into practice.

the next in the series

 I am marking down the time until the second installment of the Hobbit. Since I fell in love with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien I can't seem to get enough  Middle Earth in my life. I have been excited about the premier, though it is still some months away, since I saw the preview played before "Man of Steel" and the local movie theatre last week.

 It seems like a good time to re-read the adventures of Bilbo Baggins & Co.
I already have a true crime novel set locally and another my sister received two of as birthday gifts on loan from her and laid aside for vacation coming up in a couple of weeks. The Hobbit would round out my list very nicely I think.

on boredom

The grandbaby spent the day with us. It is not yet 5 p.m. as I write this and she is playing with the dogs. She's just returned from a trip to the market with her granddad.  They tied up tomato plants and picked the fruits of several of them.
There is chicken spaghetti cooking for supper, made from angel hair pasta, since tonight is "Tangled" night. We scrapbooked a while. She played dress up for a bit. She's gotten better and better at occupying herself, though we she still interacts with us and with we with her a good deal of the time she is with us.
I blogged recently about diversions and distractions and the fact that we are pretty good, in my family, of finding ways to occupy ourselves.
Even in the summertime, my sisters and I could find fun and seldom complained of boredom.
I think it is a lesson we learned at our Grandma's house.
My sister once declared to one of our offspring,
"No one gets bored at Grandma's!"
and it was true.
There was always something to do.
We are all VORACIOUS READERS and there were always books and magazines to read.
From inside some magazines there were paper dolls to be cut out and played with.
There were card games to play: go fish, spoons, crazy eight. There were board games:  namely Scrabble and Chinese checkers.
Pick up sticks and jacks.
There were tins of pictures to look through.
At any given time there was a porch swing on the front porch and another hanging from a huge tree near the flower garden.
There was a bag swing under the hill in an alcove carved out for us amidst a stand of canes, flowering vinca and a crag of rocks.
Yet another swing hung from a tall stand near the garage.
There were balls and bats in the garage and croquet mallets on the patio.

Nostalgic

As I was finishing up my last blog post, entitled "Traditions" it came to me, again, why I have been so nostalgic. It's the scrapbooking I've been doing.
 Today, my grandbaby and I have been finishing up her "1,2, 3 book." It contains memories of her first three years, hence the name. That just leaves years three and four to get done, hopefully this summer. Year four she is calling her "Pre-K" book and year five will be her "Kindergarten book."
As we separated out pictures for pages to go in her books, we discussed the things that have changed...
hair styles and colors,. her aunt's beau's, additions to the  family by birth and marriage. We also noted the things that are the same, holiday after holiday; year after year.

Traditions

There are some things in my family that just are.
Some of them have long been and some developed more recently. Some it is likely because the little girl pictured just below has a love for traditions that rivals my own. Do something twice while she is around and it becomes a tradition in her book and likely on the family calendar.
Some of our traditions come from spending holidays with my husband's family. Those include opening gifts on Christmas Eve and then leaving gingersnaps out for Santa (because my husband's cousin Kay always made them for us at Christmas time.) We also have etouffee for dinner before Candlelight Service on Christmas Eve using the recipe of a beloved family friend known to us as "MaMai."
We now have them with cups of hot chocolate made using Nana's recipe at Christmas.

A good many of our traditions have to do with food.
We have turkey and dressing, green bean casserole, broccoli and cheese for Thanksgiving.
 Leave just one of those off  the menu and watch our children howl.

We have scalloped potatoes and ham for new years with 15 bean soup and cornbread for New Year's.
When someone mentions I picnic, I think cold fried chicken, stuffed eggs, sweet pickles and watermelon because that's what my Grandma always packed for us to eat at when we picnicked at Sportsman's Lake or Lake Eufala.

Some traditions involve TV and movies:
We watch Pollyanna on the Fourth of July and just as watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and the Purina dog show following it.

We also have table setting traditions. We use my wedding china at Easter and my daughter's Cuthbertson china at Christmas. At Thanksgiving , it's friendly village, a few pieces left from my mother-in-law's set and the rest belong to my baby daughter. I add to her collection every year at Christmas. (Another tradition.)
My baby sister and baby daughter usually gather foliage and berries and late blooming fauna for the Thanksgiving table to tuck in around Grandma's cornucopia.

There are birthday traditions, too. Our children were served breakfast in bed on their birthdays f rom a tray we got as a wedding gift from the aforementioned MaMai. There are gift traditions, too. Usually involving something to wear for to celebrate their natal day and something to sleep in once the celebration is over.
Then there are the traditional decorations we use. We hang appliqued Christmas stockings purchased on a family trip to New Orleans many years ago. We've displayed paper mache and resin nativity and angels for years. I've given my husband for Christmas for at least 30 years. Those are on display in his office every holiday season.

I am reminded of this this week, in the hiatus between major holidays because I am finishing up some scrapbooks in anticipation of a family reunion and some birthdays. The things we do over and over and the continuity it creates between events and people makes me very happy.

The blue room

At my Grandparents, there was an odd little room, above the cellar, connected to the patio that served as our playhouse.
At various times Daddy used it as a reloading room. Later, Grandma used it as a storeroom.
In all phases of use, there were drawers of built in cabinets which held old copies of Look and Life magazines. Old formals hung in the closets. There were random items on the cornice shelf over the windows. There were floral curtains over the windows. The walls were painted Grandma Blue. There was a day bed where the occasional nap could be enjoyed under a quilt.
It was the perfect place to spend a rainy afternoon. So long as we did not disturb the trunk and crates used for storage, we could play to our hearts' content. And we did. For hours and hours. Day after day. I wish I could go back there today.

saving things

I can still remember what the perfume I am holding in the picture above smelled like.
That I am clutching it so firmly is telling.
I do not remember, particularly, the Barbie paperdolls, but I am pretty sure I punched out the clothes carefully, making sure not to tear them and then hid them where my little sisters, three and five years younger than me couldn't find them.
I holds to things.
I am a saver. I've already blogged about my propensities toward attachments. It goes way back.
Maybe it was the influence of my grandmother who lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. She saved bread sacks and tinfoil and made grocery lists on the backs of old receipts.
She wasn't so much being green as she was saving it. I spent too many years as a Girl Scout leader not to at least be green conscious. But truth be told, I am a saver by nature as much as anything.

Aunt Janie's store

When I was a young child, we live next door to a grocery store. The proprietor just happened to be my great aunt. Because the back part of the building was her home we spent lots of time there.
In some ways this aunt was more like a grandparent. She accompanied mother to take us to the doctor. Back then, if you went to the doctor, you got a shot. Either you were sick and you got a shot to make you well or you were well and you got a shot to keep you that way. Aunt Janie always held us while we got shots.
The story goes that before I started to school, she could send me to retrieve almost any item on the grocery store shelves to fill an order, provided I could reach it. She paid me from the  candy counter. Or with a dill pickle from a gallon jar sitting upon the meat case. I did not eat the pickled eggs and the thought of the pickled pigs feet still makes me gag, but I loved those dill pickles.
There was a Dr. Pepper sign outside bearing the name "Kelley Grocery" beneath it but what I recall drinking from a barrel filled with ice was RC cola in a bottle.
If I was there at lunch time, Aunt Janie would cut thick slabs of bologna and red rind cheese on the meat slicer and use them to make us sandwiches.
She also made one of the best hamburgers on the planet but that was for when she was in her kitchen "at home" behind the store in the same building.
On weekends and holidays, many lively games of canasta and dominoes were played on her kitchen table with throes of relatives. But on weekdays and some Saturdays, at Kelley Grocery, other than customers going in and out, it was often just she and I.
I liked it that way.

diversions and distractions

There are some times when tedium will take one over if some diversion or distraction is not found.
One of those times: a long car trip.
We often opt for word games and guessing games.
How loud one can be inside one's own vehicle is up to oneself.
We are fans in the out of doors of cloud watching and bird watching.
But what about indoors, in a place where noise is not permitted?
Electronics!
In those days before Ipads and Iphones and Angry Birds and Farmville, we had Gameboy.

My eldest daughter once had three major surgeries in three months. We spent a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms. The picture immediately below is of myself, my husband and my baby sister thoroughly occupied with Gameboy games.
My sister preferred Dr. Mario. I tried but was never able to beat her score. On Tetris I was much better.
I loved Tetris. I came with the Gameboy, which actually was my son's. I spent so much time playing it that I got pretty good at it.
At one time I held the neighborhood high score on the B game, 5 lines high. That I was competing again a bunch of elementary school students did not bother me at all. I was proud.
 
 

The little darling there playing Gameboy in bed is my baby daughter. During her sisters convalescence from the aforementioned surgeries, there were times when she had to occupy herself. Other times, I needed her to be relatively quiet while her big sister napped or was so fatigued she had to be put to bed early.
She became quite a Gameboy champ, too. I don't recall her particular game, just that she passed many minutes propped up like you see her here.
They say the hand/eye coordination is useful to kiddos. Maybe I am just consoling myself out of the guilt I feel for her having to occupy herself so much of the time during certain times of her life.
But she did just finish in the top five of her law school class for second semester of her 1L year and I am thinking maybe her focus of attention was born with Gameboy.

Attachments



linus van pelt
 

 

We all are attached to some things, I suppose. Some of us, though, are more prone to develop them than others.I know people who tire of furniture and books and people quickly and pass them off easily. I am not one of them nor are some of my family members.
The children in our family attach to  favorite toys and blankets. The Peanuts character "Linus" is not along in that particular propensity.
My youngest nephew had a pillow he would fight you over. He kept it in the fridge because he liked it to be cold when he was ready for bedtime. The boy was serious about his pillow. I thought this was hysterical but I have to admit, I've developed serious attachments of my own at times.
My husband has had to pry me out of certain automobiles even after  their time had passed. I once carried the same handbag for almost a decade. I will wear the same shade of lipstick and nail polish until it is discontinued or I can no longer find it.
I wear the same two or three jackets and pairs of shoes order the same meals in restaurants. I tell myself I will order something different but I never do.
My grandbaby gets stuck on movies and television shows. In her second year, we matched the Disney movie "Mulan" until we all could quote parts of it verbatim.
My eldest child has worn out copies of the movie "Steel Magnolias" and the cinema version of the musical "Annie."
I blogged earlier about saving things... keeping them in case I need them later as much as for sentiment.  It is my attachments that cause me to save things as much as anything.
There, I've admitted it.


 

what summer looks like

 

look at the above collage of photos and you will have a pretty good idea of what summer looks like around me.
Cut hydrangeas in a vase I got for my birthday. My grandbaby holding a bowl of rainier cherries. Petunias planted by the front walk, sedum starting to bloom, baby tomatoes on the vines in my little kitchen garden. Crepe myrtles and day lilies in glorious bloom.  A stack of books waiting to be read. Little girls in bathing suits petting a horse. Big girls in concert dress making photo ops.
A knock out rose in a planter on the front porch about to enter its second cycle of blooms for the season. A little girl ready to come inside but wanting to bring her granddad's lab in with her.
There are other things:
sweet potato vines planted in planters alongside boxwoods and rose moss.
Trumpetvine creeping up the backyard fence.
Flip flops under my kitchen desk.
Children racing to the ice cream truck when it turns the corner.
Those are some of the signs of summer.
Oh, and one more thing.
Tonight I am going to be in search of lightening bugs.

at the lake

 

We spent some time this weekend at my sister's lake place. Her grandchildren, who spend a good deal of time there are much more accustomed to lake water and activities than my own grandchild. She has to readjust swimming in  water you can't see into. Though my sweet nephew pulled her and her cousins at a careful speed behind his boat on a water tube, it was still too fast for her.
She just gets it all worked through and it is time to leave again. We should come back more often, my sisters says, and she is right.
There are play spaces under the stairs and in the children's room full of toys. She loves playing there with these cousins she doesn't see nearly often enough. They love making pallets on the floor of the great room of the beautiful lake house my brother-in-law had built not so long ago.
One of the cousins loves to fish. He is tolerant of her fishing along side him and chattering all the while. He is less tolerant of the speed with which she wants to be pulled on the lake tube.
The other cousin, herself a chatterbox, is game for whatever the other two want to do. Mostly.
Can you imagine a more fun place to be?

we still play

I read recently that people who enjoy periodic recreation live longer.
Basically the article said there are real health benefits to play.
My sisters and I are pretty healthy. Maybe this is because we know how to play.

When we were young, we:

had tea parties under a mimosa tree
played dress up, taking turns being the bride and bridemaids.
We played school and grocery store.
We made forts through a thick stand of cane poles when we'd outgrown building them with sofa cushions.
We could be found wading and catching tad poles in the creek in the summer and slide skating on it in the winter.
On rainy days we played board games and card games and spent more than a little time looking through old pictures or sorting buttons. We played many of those same things with our kids and grandkids. Last Thanksgiving we played jax. Even some of the husbands participated.
We've fiercely competitive, especially playing scrabble and pick up sticks.
I still remember how much fun is was to sit on the porch swing on our Grandma's porch and watch the traffic on the highway, playing "the next car is your car." That's a game I think we invented. We would "call" the approaching vehicles as "mine" or "yours" and hope we claimed the cool ones for ourselves and the junkers for someone else. We kept score.
Even as adults we've had competitions on who could find the tackiest pair of shoes or most unusual music CD.
Who knew this was actually GOOD for us?!
I am going to encourage my sisters to come out/over and play more often!

a girl who knows her own mind

 

My granddaughter has expressed strong opinions since she was very small. Her preferences in clothes and shoes and other accessories, in activities, in food, in books and movies... in just about everything are well defined and completely her own.
I like that about her.
To get her view on the world, you need only ask her. She is only too happy to share her perspective.
We have interesting discussions about what she likes and why.
Below I've placed examples of some of her favorite things.

 

 

she's being drawing since she was little. this
 is her interpretation of one of our dogs.

 

she loves wearing a dress she found at Cracker Barrel
while we were waiting for our table.

 

 

the girl loves broccoli
 

 

 

 

 

Big girl bike

My grandbaby turns six years old at the end of this month. Last weekend, the Hub and I bought her birthday gift and gave it to her early. We did that so she could enjoy her present: a new bicycle.
It was way past time for her to have a big bike. She has ridden a tricycle on the driveway and on the sidewalks at my house for too long. It was time she had a two wheeler and we all knew it.
She picked out a Barbie bike. I am just old school enough to be happy with it. We got elbow and knee pads and a Barbie helmet, careful grandparents that we are.
She isn't ready for the training wheels to come off but the way time flies, it probably won't be long.
The weather has been so pleasant that she's been able to do quite a bit of riding. Someone forgot to tell the weather it's July.
My Grandbaby remembers what month it is, even if temperature is in the 80's rather than triple digits. It's her birthday month. And she has a new birthday bicycle.

artsy, craftsy

Between my Grandmother's kitchen and her den there hung an arrangement of plastic fruit
that circulated  in and out of style during my lifetime.
The woman had style. A style of her own.
She had subscriptions to McCall's and  Better Homes and Gardens.
She could follow a pattern and make anything from a pillow to a window box.
She even made her own patterns when she couldn't find one that what she wanted to make.
Whether it was spiced cider for quilting guild or Christmas ornaments for us or popcorn balls for trick-or-treaters she made, the results were fabulous.
She quilted all winter with her mom, my great-grandma. made bird houses out of gourd she grew. She made rugs and doilies, tea towels and doll clothes by hand. She embellished her own stationary; always decorating the envelopes. Her large script writing with fancy flourishes and flowers were a welcomed sight in the mail box.
She trimmed topiaries into fancy shapes.
She was constantly planting bulbs,  dug them, separated and shared them.
What she couldn't do with a role of contact paper or a can of paint.
Further proof of her style:
Her corner curio cabinet and bookshelves were filled with amazing little whatnots and knick knacks.
She had a gold fish pond big enough that we waded in it when we were little.
She had ledger sized books filled with newspaper clippings of interest, recipes and souvenirs.
Her personal style is demonstrated by the hat she is wearing there on our porch holding me when I was a baby.

sweet tea and kitchen shears

It occurred to me just this morning why I have been thinking, and blogging about my paternal grandmother so much lately. I was in the yard pruning a topiary with my kitchen shears when it hit me that I used them like clippers or trimmers because she did. I have watched her a thousand times.
She used scissors for lots of things.
She used a pair for her stationary to trim her nails sometimes. She used the same pair from time to time to cut my bangs and my two sisters'  (much to our mother's dismay!)
She used a pair of kitchen shears to cut lettuce to make salad.
She could often be found cutting out articles from the local paper or patterns for some project.
I am reminded of her at some point every day. A lot of my friends and family order sweet tea when we  go out to dinner. I am not interested in any tea that doesn't taste like my Grandma's and I've yet to find that.  I have her cornbread skillet but I can't make my cornbread taste like hers.
My maternal grandparents lived in West Texas when I was a child. We made many happy memories at their home in El Dorado and their lake house in Kingland with many cousins summers and holidays but daily exposure belonged to my Okie Grandma and Grandpa.
Thankfully, many of the lessons took.
I still hear her voice in my head saying "keep still" and "do a good job."
I am reminded of her in my yard and in my house, at restaurants and even in my own thoughts.
I miss her every day. t seems I miss her more as time goes on.