Sunday, December 14, 2008

What Is Your Christmas Style?

I'm finishing up (the total went up!) 15 embroidered scarves over the next few days. They're the ones that are Christmas presents for my daughters' friends.

Concurrently working on Christmas wall hangings for gifts. Usually I buy religious-themed ornaments for my Godchildren but have been disappointed with the lack of ornate, fancy ornaments as of late. I've always purchased Hallmark ones, but the past few years have been a disappointment in the Nativity, Mary and Jesus, etc., Christmas-themed ones.

So using a coupon code w/sale from Embroidery Library, I purchased 5 new embroidery designs to make the gifts, rather than buy them. Which got me to thinking about the holiday designs I like. My taste is geared toward religious-based or victorian style designs. I bought two Christmas tree designs, one of the Nativity, one of Mary and Jesus, and another one of Christmas bells in a Victorian style. I was so mad I forgot to purchase a Hannukah design for my friend who is Jewish. I'll have to go back and find one just for her.

What I don't like are the "cute-sy" styles--Christmas mice or teddy bears, kid themes, Rudolph or Santa ones. Probably because there is already so much commercialism in Christmas, I tend to go the other route.

FINALLY, I'm getting in the Christmas groove. The butter is sitting on my counter to make cookies, the Christmas tree has been up since Black Friday, and I just finished taking down the rest of the Thanksgiving decorations. Tomorrow it is supposed to be warmer so I'll put them in storage and bring out the rest of the Christmas decorations. Even watched It's a Wonderful Life last night. I still have to take the annual Christmas pic of my kids in front of the tree though. That's like 5-minutes of torture, bribery, and threats LOL. I can hear it now: "Get off me...you're too close...you're breath stinks...why are you acting so dumb?...sit still so we can get this over with... Then they shoot out of the family room once I announce I have enough pics to choose from. Ah...the reasons why we haven't done professional family portraits in maybe 7 or 8 years? Doing it at home prevents 2 hours of parental insanity.

Right now it's wonderfully quiet. My oldest is in her room taking a nap (high school dance followed by a sleepover at her friend's house last night), my other daughter and both boys are down at the batting cages. So what's a mom to do? Turn on some Christmas music, fire up the sewing and embroidery machines, and bask in the holiday spirit!

Sure hope your afternoon is just as wonderful :) !

4 comments:

2BSewing: said...

I'm finished with my Christmas sewing. If I was to do any embroidery (which I'll end up doing next week), I would probably pick contemporary Christmas themes. That's the way I am with my decorating taste...contemporary. I sure do like the designs at Embroidery Library and they are reasonably priced.

Yes...I'm having a wonderful day of sewing. :)

Knigma said...

You are the nicest mom to make all those Christmas presents for your daughter's friends.

I would love to see your new embroideries stitched out.

Bonnie O. said...

I would love to see a photo of your embroidered scarves. I'm trying to think of a scarf idea for my 14 yr old son and I've been stumped.

Lisa Laree said...

I am so hearing you on the Christmas ornaments. Every year it seems like the ornaments that actually have something to do with Christmas (and I'll take Rudolph or Snoopy or even Tigger, so long as it's got something on it to do with Christmas!) are getting a smaller and smaller proportion of the display, while sports figures and movie characters (what is Christmassy about Darth Vader? Or Jack Sparrow??) take over more and more.

Time to get crafty, eh?