Advent Activities: Christmas-y Weekend

On Saturday, we went to the mall, our annual pilgrimage to the altar of American consumerism.  But not for the shopping.  Bud's kung fu team was doing a performance to entertain holiday shoppers.  We did do a little shopping at Hot Topics, with all its geeky Doctor Who and Star Wars stuff, more to distract Bud from his performance than anything else.

After a stellar event, and some Froyo, we watched that very traditional holiday film . . . Hunger Games.  Yep, the kids are knee-deep into the story of Katniss and Panem, plowing through the books and now starting the movies.

Yesterday was the kids' annual December holiday piano recital, which went off swimmingly with Sis playing "Hedwig's Them" and "Shake it Off," and Bud playing "Home Fried Potatoes" and something which title I forget ("Stepping" or "Swinging," something.)  They went first and second and were glad to be done, sitting quietly through numerous Christmas, pop, and classical songs and waiting patiently for the snacks at the end, including my orange poundcake, which was popular.

We headed home, counting Christmas trees as we went--we count all season and are up above 90 spotted on the roof of cars from the nearby popular tree farm.  We have an artificial tree, because of the cats, and have decided to put it up on the last day of school and making a celebration of it by staying up late decorating the house.

On the way home we also saw a holiday bazaar in an historic building and stopped to look around.  I picked up a Bucilla Christmas ornament kit exactly like the one my great-grandmother made for Aunt Banana and me when we were little, with kittens and mice in stockings.

And I took some photos of decorated doors on historic houses in the area, which really capture New England Christmas for me.  Makes me doubly glad we'll be doing Christmas by Candlelight at Old Sturbridge Village soon.

But first, we watched . . . Catching Fire.  Such cheerful holiday fare.

The Tree

With thoughts of the sadness with which my in-laws now approach Christmas, all of their Christmas decorations (decades of series of Hallmark ornaments, especially the Angels and the Eskimo Girl, plus all the homemade school ornaments, which Ma so proudly showed us each year, a different story for each) and so many other keepsakes destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, I wanted to record some of our Christmas tree this year.  It's not everything, not even especially my favorites, but the ones I got good pictures of, ones with good stories.

And now, instead of all the ornaments hung at the bottom of the tree when the kids decorated as toddlers and preschooler, the ornaments are all smack dab in the middle of the tree (the bottom left empty so as not to entice the cats!)

The kids clustered several of the ball ornaments together.

From last year, the polymer clay ornament I made.

Two faux origami dove ornaments from AMNH last year

A glass nativity given to me by Aunt Dot, I believe, decades ago; plus the polymer clay chick we got on Sunday for contributing to Heifer International at church (we bought two sets of chicks!)

These ornaments, plus another dozen or two, were made for me by my great-grandmother Mildred when I was the kiddos' age.  She gifted me a whole little artificial tree with puffy homemade heart ornaments, and a tree skirt, that I kept for years.  The tree is long gone and the ornaments disappeared about Gommie and Pop's fire, but I found them again on our trip to Texas this summer.  Our tree is complete with them.

Bud's origami penguins, from last year, inspired by AMNH's origami tree