Four Part Harmony

Howdy folks. I thought I’d take a minute now that the rest of the family has gone to bed to do a quick update, and post a few new-ish photos. It’s been tough to find time to sit down and keep the blog up to date, what with all the other projects going on, and the big holiday season upon us.

That’s actually mostly what we’ve been up to of course, is making preparations for our Christmas and winter solstice celebrations. After going back and forth on whether or not to get a tree (I lobbied against a cut down tree, but Nicki really wanted a tree) we went ahead and got a living tree. It seems like a pretty good deal. We have the tree delivered and keep it for a few weeks. Then, rather than tossing it out at the curb, they come back and pick it up and take it off to be planted (ostensibly as restoration, but the tree is a non-native fir so I don’t know how suited it is to restoration work). Still, it’s a handsome little tree. Here’s a shot of Nicki and Anna doing the decorating.

Another photo of Nicki and Anna getting the decorations ready for the tree.

Of course, Nicki did most of the actual decorating. I was taking pictures, and Anna was busy with this bubble wrap.

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One thing we’ve been doing this month is using this neat advent calendar that Nicki made for Anna. She’s got it filled up with all kinds of interesting and fun things us to do. Anna really has enjoyed getting to go and pick the little slip of paper each day (usually she wants to pick more than one). One day we went to a puppet show. Another day we made pictures with stamps. Another day we made popcorn and strung some up for the tree.

We also made some holiday cards to send out. You will all hopefully be getting one. We cut stamps out of potato halves, and then dipped them in paint. It was pretty fun and messy. Anna had fun with it for a while, but then moved on to other things.

I hope this one looks as difficult as it was. We had to use a sweet potato for this one, because we didn’t have any potatoes long enough to carry the whole word. Also, it’s a good thing a sweet potato has two halves, because I carved the word forwards the first time before Nicki pointed out that it wasn’t going to stamp properly…Well, this should look good on my resume anyway.

In other news, I think I’ve got all the posts documenting my guitar building project migrated over here now. There’s a little tab up in the menu bar where they will all live. I think they’ll all show up here on the front page first though, so now you all will be subjected to them, like it or not. I’ve been working on it here and there, and making some actual progress. I’ll see if I can put a post together in the next day or two.