Line tamer.
Well, thanks to my older sister, check Marilyn off my ornament wish list. Here she is decked out in the dress she wore in the opening number, “Two Little Girls from Little Rock” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I gave my older sister a sparkly ice blue owl, with lots of cut-outs and negative space in its spread wings, Read More …
Happy third day of Christmas. Another train post. My dad wanted a Santa Fe Lionel engine when he was twelve. He settled for the same style diesel in the Erie line, bought it with his paper money when he was 14. The Santa Fe engine is expensive now, but Michael found a Santa Fe locomotive Read More …
Happy Boxing Day. It’s become a family tradition in recent years to go have lunch together at the Brew Works in downtown Bethlehem and then walk up and down Main Street and pop into shops like Donegal Square and the Moravian Book Shop. That’s where the beeswax angel came from on my tree. The cloying Read More …
Merry Christmas! I hope the Santas in your life were good to you today. Today marks the beginning of the twelve days of Christmas in case that ever confused you (we all know how marketing and radio hosts like to screw that up), the period from now until Epiphany on January 6th when the wise Read More …
Christmas Eve. I’m headed to Christmas City, USA today with Michael to celebrate the holiday with my family. There will be carol singing tonight, and egg nog drinking. My father will watch the Pope’s Christmas sermon like he does every year after we get back from the Christmas Eve church service. Growing up, the Christmas Read More …
Some of you may be familiar with my Christmas poem, “The Pickle and The Pear” (you can read the poem here.) These are the two ornaments that inspired it (I told you more pears were to come!). In fact, some of the other ornaments mentioned in the poem have appeared in these posts. Perhaps I should Read More …
The weekend before Christmas, my parents and siblings would pack into the family van and drive to the country to find the perfect tree. Sometimes our neighbor, Liz and her two children (and our playmates), Michael and Catherine, would join us to get their tree too. We would hike up and down hills covered with Read More …
Happy Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice. As I sit hear listening to Tori Amos’s Midwinter Graces, watching the sun already set low in the west, I’ve got to thinking about some of my favorite Christmas movies, and how dark they are. Like Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. I’m fond of singing “Make-ing Christ-mas, Make-ing, Christ-mas, la la Read More …
I think it is safe to say Christmas is the most important holiday in my family, especially for my mother. Every year on Thanksgiving night, after the meal has been cleared and we’re awake from our post-turkey naps and thinking about second helpings of pumpkin pie, the first viewing of White Christmas happens. When we Read More …
Since I mentioned my niece, a post devoted to ornaments from her: a stain-glassed pear she painted, and a cut-out snowflake. A Christmas tree should have a good mix of handmade ornaments and polished, store-bought ones. Both make me think of the giver, but the rough edges of the handmade ones always make me smile Read More …