Merry Christmas!

Here I am 4 days later showing up to say Merry Christmas... Last two weeks were overwhelming and right now I am actually putting quiet a bit of an effort trying to keep my eyes open:)

We had a great Christmas! We involved ourselves in all those little things that manifest Christmas... We set up a tree and decorated it with glass(omg!) ornaments. Last couple of years we had to put pinecones and ribbons on tree branches to prevent injuries to our curious toddlers. This year kids were old enough to get the message and did not pull on the ornaments, in fact they helped us to decorate the Christmas tree, carefully lining up 5 to 10 glass balls on one branch:)

We baked Christmas cookies! Growing up in Latvia my mom would always buy for us piparkukas (traditional spiced cookies) around Christmas time - they were decorated with colorful icing and sold on all major corners of my home city.

A couple of years ago accidentally I found the recipe for piparkukas in one of the cooking books at the library.

Now I make them every Christmas and my childhood home becomes a bit closer.

We went to see a Nativity Exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum. Unfortunately my camera really didn't do me much good there. But believe me, it was fantastic - they had handmade nativity collections from all around the world!

We celebrated with friends and amazingly had WHITE Christmas, here in Dallas Texas! Just 2 days before the Holiday kids got hot running around the park in long sleeved tees. It was anything but winter! Then on Christmas eve the air became freezing and by the end of the day snow storm came! Surprisingly some snow stayed till Christmas morning:) Kids even got a chance to play with it!

So here it is, my belated Christmas posting. I hope you all had a joyful Christmas!

Christmas mood

I love fall and fall colors - black tree stems tangled in yellow and orange and red... and fall decor, all these pumpkins, gourds and scarecrows... I am sad that Thanksgiving is over and it's time to decorate for Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and decorating in general, but Christmas brings just too much pressure. Everyone is in a hurry, getting ready, stressing out! Everything is spinning like it is not Happiest holiday of all coming up but the end of the world. So decorating comes with the pressure too. But it must be done:)

My daughter is 4 and a half and my son is almost 3. They are two volcanoes of creativity! They love to glue, cut, draw, paint and they will do pretty much anything with me. Today we finally pulled out that stick with pinecones, that stayed in our garage since August, spray painted it silver and hung some felted decor on it. It worked out beautifully: while I was stitching the bird, kids were cutting up little pieces of felt for me. I did give them fabric scissors, because it's impossible to cut felt with the kids ones. When kids were done cutting, they handed me bits of felt one by one while I suspended each piece on the string between two beads.

Felt leftovers we stuffed in the vase. I think, that the whole thing looks very festive and the main thing - children can participate in this project, have fun and feel important! It is also a very affordable project - 3 sheets of felt, some seed beads, thread and a couple of sticks from your backyard (you don't' have to spray paint the sticks, they can be left natural or sprinkled with glitter)!