Christmas Is Coming

 Here is a selection of some of our handmade ornaments (on our artificial tree):

This is a clay ornament I made perhaps eight or nine years ago.

This is an Ojo de Dios I made last week with coffee stir sticks and embroidery floss.

This is a wooden ornament that I painted with some designs that I kipped from Mary Englebright. These came in a kit from Target with wooden blanks and cheaper than cheap pots of acrylic paint and the worst brush they could find. I used my own acrylic paints and paint brushes and magic markers.

This is another wooden ornament that I used acrylic paint and sharpie marker on.

Dave sliced and dried oranges to make these. They glow with the Christmas lights behind them. Next year we're going to try this with lemons, limes and grapefruit. We'll have a citrus tree!

This is another clay ornament I made a long time ago.

I've been making and gifting these since the pandemic began. I never kept any because we haven't had a tree in over 20 years, but this year I made two for us. The masked Santa is a print from Spoonflower, fussy cut, sandwiched with some batting and backing and pinked.

Another painted wooden ornament. There were also snowflakes and round ornaments. I realized painting those that I don't enjoy painting those. Too small for my clumsy fingers.

I did not get pictures of the folded fabric stars I made, but here's an overall view of the tree by day. The garland is popcorn that I strung (you can't see the dark red cranberries against the dark tree).

The tree is six feet tall with a narrow profile. I thought six feet would be good, but our ceilings are probably ten feet, so our tree looks tiny. We put it up on a footstool, it looked so short. I told Dave I'm going to look for an eight foot tree in the after Christmas sales. 

I like to look at it when it's lit up at night. (I'll have to get a photo.) We used to have to stand around awkwardly to do that, but yesterday two men in a truck brought an enormous new sofa and put it in our front room with the tree. It's too big, yes. We have to go into the other room if we want to change our minds, but it is very comfortable. We don't have a television and the fireplace is in the corner, so we faced the sofa to look out the big glass doors onto the patio. Right now, the leaves are off the tree, so we have a nice view of the mountains. In the spring, summer, and fall, we'll be looking at the tree though. Good enough.

We found an Indian restaurant nearby so we ordered takeout from them last night. I had tandoori chicken and we shared aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower) and dal tarka (spicy lentils). The order came with rice and I also requested paratha (whole wheat bread). Dave added garlic naan and spinach pakoras with chutney. We really feasted then put away the leftovers for today's lunch. It was all very tasty and I think we'll be ordering takeout from them again.

Our Christmas eve dinner with be vegetarian posole and Christmas Day we'll have Dave's favorite mac and cheese with roasted Brussels sprouts. Judi sent us a buche de Noel so that will be our dessert. Of course, Dave has been making cookies, too. So far he's made two or three batches of biscochitos and two batches of gingerbread. He's got plans for Mexican wedding cookies and fudge, but he will have to wait until we pick up our grocery order later today because we are almost out of sugar, flour, cinnamon, and shortening (vegetable shortening even though biscochitos should really be made with lard). The fudge requires chocolate and he had to order pecans and extra walnuts for the wedding cookies. (Luckily most of these things will be given away.) 

Today's mail brought an order from Zingermans that included more sweets and breads and I guess we're just planning on waddling into the new year. So much for bikini season. (As if.) I'm making a big pot roast for myself for dinner tonight to counteract all the carbs, because, man, my pancreas.)