Christmas Scavenger Hunt

At Christmas,  we trade getting gifts for a family.  This year one of our daughters and her family had our names.  When we opened the box on Christmas morning, we found 6 smaller boxes and envelopes inside along with a letter explaining that we should open box #1 first and then do what it said before opening the next box. Pictorial evidence of compliance was to be posted where they could see it.

The first directions from Liliana were to find a moose...but not in our house.  I guess she knew we had several moose items easily at hand and just wanted to make it harder for us!  There are wild moose around our area but I haven't actually seen one for 4-5 years now but I thought I knew where to find a moose that would work, though it was not readily available on Christmas Day.  We went to the sporting good section of a local store to see if they had a target with a moose picture on it, but they only had zombies.  Fortunately as we were leaving we found this cute moose.

Lincoln wanted us to find a race car.  We managed to find that, also.  I really wanted to find an Indy type race car since that is what I grew up with, but we decided this one would work just as well.

 

Emmaline came up with quite a challenge.  At first I thought it said to wok a dog.  I think we had a cookbook like that once.  No, we were to walk a dog.  We don't have a dog.  Most of our neighbors don't have dogs.  We couldn't just walk up to some stranger walking a dog and grab the leash!  They would think we were dognappers.  Then we remembered that long ago, the woodworker was the high school yoyo champion!  Sure enough, he still remembered how to do the yoyo trick called walk the dog!  

Imogene thought we needed to feed a horse.  Again...we have no horse.  Fortunately we knew where there were some horses that were friendly where we volunteer in the summer.  It meant we had to sort of trespass a bit since they are closed right now, but we managed it.

Coralie wanted us to swing at the park.  Hm.....our park HAS no swings!  Hopefully we found a suitable alternative!

The very last box had the instructions to go out to dinner and included a gift card to HuHot  Mongolian Grill, where it seems possible to get food that fits any diet.  It took a while to figure out the best day to treat ourselves with dinner but we finally decided we'd just kill two birds with one stone and go on my birthday, which we did.  Don't judge the quality of the food by the facial expressions.  Pictures taken while eating never turn out well!  It was delicious!

 

 

Christmas Ornaments With Stories

Every year we seem to acquire new ornaments for  our Christmas tree.  This year I made them myself.  I took a round piece of plastic mesh about 3 inches in diameter.  Then I cut out 4 pictures the same size as the mesh and laminated them.  I placed them on the mesh and then used a needle to poke holes all around the edges of the mesh.  Then I used yarn to fasten the edges together and to hold the pictures in place.  It would be easy to use any sort of picture to make similar ornaments.  In this case, the color side of the ornament has pictures of the woodworkers parents and my parents.

The reverse side of the picture, the black and white side, has the same couples on their wedding days.  They were married almost 2 months apart back in 1946.  I rather liked seeing them on the tree.

The other ornament with a story is really not new.  I am sure one of  our kids made the star many years ago.  It was made from a piece of poster board, cut in the shape of a star, then covered on both sides with festive carousel pony wrapping paper.  Over the years it has been a stalwart ornament for the bottom of the tree while the more breakable ornaments hang higher, out of the reach of small children.  This year we had 7 grandchildren here to help in decorating the tree, so I handed the breakable things to the older children and gave the more sturdy things to the younger children.  Over the years we have had 3 different angels residing on the top of our tree.  The angel always goes on last.

The youngest child this year turned 2 in September and was thrilled to help decorate a Christmas tree.  At home she apparently has a storybook which shows a picture of a baby being held up by its father to place a star on top of the tree. When I handed her the wrapping paper star and told her to put it on the bottom of the tree she resisted strongly and pointed up at the top of the tree and let us know quite emphatically that she knew very well where that star belonged.  After all, she'd seen it in her book!  We called her dad into the room and he lifted her up so she could place that star right where she wanted it.  I kind of liked it there.  Maybe we'll put it there again next year.

It's Christmas Time in the City

We had to take a trip to the city earlier this week for an appointment, so since we had enough points saved up to get us a free motel room for the night we decided we decided to make it a twofer and enjoy the Christmas atmosphere at the same time.  We started off by visiting the City Creek Center which has been there quite a while now, and yet, we have never visited it before.  It covers about four city blocks and is full of various shops, restaurants, a large food court, condominiums and the like.  We live in a desert, but here in the mall, water is everywhere, in fountains, water falls and even a bit of the original City Creek which runs through the building.

 

Our favorite fountain was this rather nondescript looking round one, mostly because every so often it totally changed character and started shooting streams of water and bouncing in time to the musicl

 

The bouncing fountain in action!

 

Here is a bit of City Creek running through the middle of the mall.

Still shot of the 'bouncing' fountain.

 We decided on Greek food for lunch and ate it near the play area of the food court which was full of dinosaurs and children playing on, under, around and over the dinosaurs.  They all seemed to be having a good time.

The woodworker's preferred buffet would have been here, but it was a little pricey!

Just so you know this was a high class place, in addition to getting your child's picture taken with Santa, you can see they have also set aside times for pet pictures as well.




....and should you ever need a taxi for your pet, this is the place for you!

 After exploring for several hours, we checked into our motel and then headed back to town just as the sun was setting.  We arrived at our destination just before 5 PM and it all looked fairly bleak and wintery, but just as it turned to 5PM, all the lights came on at once!  It looked like a fairy land.

On one wide lawn there was a nativity scene displayed.  Here are the wise men arriving on their camels.

Here is the stable...

....and the shepherds abiding .....

Under the eaves of the domed building (seen behind the stable)  a warning is displayed.  It only makes sense that snow and ice would not stay securely on a slick, domed roof.

When we went inside the nearby visitor's center to warm up, we found some intriguing chairs...well, intriguing to woodworkers....

The main part of this white nativity is situated on a reflecting pool, so surrounded by lights floating on the water.  Nearby were the shepherds and animals.

As we were leaving, we noticed this electrical box with multiple fat cables emerging from it.  I guess it would take something like that to keep all those lights going.

It was a perfect night for viewing the sights...just a few inches of snow to make everything sparkle, yet clear roads and sidewalks for safe and easy walking and driving.


I wish I could say the same for the next morning.  We had a 10 AM appt. about 30 miles to the north of our motel.  The weather report said that we had an unusual event for our area....freezing rain....followed by snow, so we decided to give ourselves plenty of time and left at 8:30 AM.  First we had to clean off the car, which was encased in a layer of ice, topped off by snow.

After a mere 2 1/2 hours we finally arrived at our destination!  The freeway more closely resembled a parking lot.  South of us part of the freeway had to be closed because some power poles had caught on fire and then spilled their live wires onto the road.  Fortunately, by the time we finished at the VA, the layer of ice under the snow had turned to slush, so we were able to make our way back home, where we found 8-10 inches of fresh snow...and thanks to good neighbors....a freshly plowed driveway!

Holiday Decor

In an effort to make the holiday season less congested, the womens group I belong to decided to have a holiday get together early in the season and leave the rest of the time in the next few months open.  Each table was decorated with ideas for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years centerpieces.  I am sure some were quite original and others came via Pinterest, but it was fun to see all the different ideas.

This one is for Halloween, of course.

 

 This elegant table decor is meant for Christmas, but I suspect could be changed to fit other occasions.

This is a Thanksgiving design.  The pumpkins are made out of paper strips.

This is another Halloween design before the dry ice was added to the cauldron.

These cute Christmas trees were made of materials found at Dollar Tree.

A bunch of flowers and leaves in Autumn colors makes an elegant bouquet.

How clever was this, to put pumpkins on top of candlestick or goblets to make a multi-layered display?

Next up were a variety of festive Christmas displays which could probably also work for New Years.

Another Thanksgiving display using glassware you might even have in your home combined with pumpkins, seeds and Autumn leaves.

This one is definitely a New Years Display!

After the dinner, we did two quick crafts, decorating pumpkins with thumbtacks and making a little nativity scene ornament.

We also learned several ways to fold napkins for our holiday tables.

Does this mean I can relax now for several months?  Will I be judged if the napkins we use are fresh from being torn off the paper towel roll?