It's funny, how we can think back and divide the past year into super-distinct phases. There was the "spraying my vegetables with Clorox" phase. The banana bread phase. The puzzle phase. The Zoom learning-curve phase. Something involving fluffy coffee that I never quite got into. That moment when all parents made carefully color-coded wall calendars for their kids, only to abandon them within the week.
I made ramen.
Remember the crafting afternoon disaster I wrote about last week? It wasn't entirely unsuccessful. There was one craft that turned out so beautifully that we're actually planning on going back and revisiting it tomorrow, because pom-pom pinecone ornaments are so cute that I kiiiind of need to make baskets of them.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Erin asked if I wanted to set up a crafting afternoon for our kids, so they could make gifts for their grandparents (and anyone else who might prefer a fingerpainted snowman to, say, a Dyptique candle, which would be no one, but that's besides the point). We started a Pinterest board to find projects that seemed doable without looking too much like...you know...crafts. Our goal was to make things that the recipients might actually enjoy, as opposed to things that they feel obligated to display in perpetuity because said thing was made by a child.
This entire post is going to come with a massive caveat, and the caveat is this: If you have children under the age of...I don't know, I've only been a parent for five years. At what age do children start sitting still? Five-year-olds don't, in any case. So here's the caveat: if you have kids aged five or under and decide to make a fucking wind chime, please be aware that you will end up being the one making it. (My five-year-old did, in fact, bead his very own wind chime strand...and then picked it up to show it to me, at which point all the beads fell off, transforming a happy crafting afternoon into a trauma likely to halt further beading experiments for two years, at minimum. Because that is what happens when you try to force a five-year-old to make a fucking wind chime.) (My two-year-old, in contrast, applied herself with spectacular concentration and perseverance. Except what she was concentrating on and persevering in was ensuring that every single piece of berry bunny cereal, including the ones she dropped on the floor, were eaten.)
I like a pretty tablescape as much as the next fancy-pants, but what I do not like is buying items that I will use exactly one week out of every year. This holiday season, I'm going for a Christmassy table setting comprised entirely of items that I either already own or have plucked from my very own backyard, making it both completely practical and completely free, whee.
Black, White & Green Holiday Tablescape
1. Pull every single white, black and gold piece of china you own out of your cupboards, and layer 'em up. If you've got any Jadeite or other green serving pieces, throw a couple of those on there, too.
Well, this is an adorable little project.
The problem with crafting generally - and Pinterest crafting, specifically - is that normal people don't have cabinets full of stuff that they can use to effortlessly whip up DIY-ed whatevers. And adding a run to Michael's to a craft transforms it from "fun and affordable alternative to store-bought" to "abject misery."
Anyway, I'm all about the crafts that you don't need to leave your house in order to do. In other words, the actually cheap and actually easy ones that just use stuff you've already got lying around.
I'm not big on shelling out tons of money on holiday decor. I mean…that stuff can get expensive. And only gets used for, what, three weeks a year?
Nothankyou.
But for real: you totally don't have to do a massive decorating run in order to make your home look like Christmas exploded inside it. Presenting: some holiday hacks that let you get good and festive without stepping one single foot outside your door (or laying down one single cent).
I'm going to miss this house SO much.
I was definitely one of those people who resisted getting a faux Christmas tree. I mean, isn't the whole experience of lugging a tree home, sweeping up pine needles every day, and having a home that smells like a forest a huge part of what makes it feel like Christmas?
By which I mean, of course...
Ugly Christmas Sweater Time!
Presenting my annual picks for Ugly Christmas Sweaters That Are Actually Cute (plus a couple of truly heinous ones that go so far beyond tacky that they take a left turn into awesome).
My favorite of our holiday traditions (which only became "a tradition" last year, but still): a family trip to a Christmas shop in Nyack, where we each pick out an ornament that symbolizes what the past year meant to us.
For Goldie: An old-school My First Christmas ball engraved with her name and birth year.
For me: An ornament with the sun on one side (to symbolize our summer in California) and a moon-and-stars design on the other (to symbolize Goldie's birth during the Supermoon and Indy's first spoken "sentence," which was "moon…stars").
