Getting Ready for Christmas

We finally got our Christmas tree up the other day. It's only partially decorated at this point, but at least it's up. We have an artificial tree that my husband & bought the year after we were married. Since we were married on Christmas Eve, we didn't bother buying a tree that year, but went ahead and waited until the following year to purchase the mammoth tree that is now in our living room. It's a much bigger tree than I had intended it to be, but with my total ineptitude at numbers, my mind couldn't register just how tall a 9 foot tree would be. I thought that was a standard size for a Christmas tree. Well, the corner of the living room that I had specially picked out for this tree would no longer do.....no, this 9 foot tall tree was way too tall to fit in that cozy little corner. So the only other place for this tree to fit was smack dab in the middle of the living room. It's at lest up against a wall, but as soon as you walk into our house - BAM! - the tree is RIGHT THERE. It's a pretty tree, that's not the issue, I'm just a little overwhelmed every year at the size of the darned thing! We have a beautiful angel that goes on the top of the tree which is, of course, a challenge to get up there and when we finally do manage to get her up there, her head hits the top of our ceiling. Yeah, it's a big tree!

And with it being December, that means it's also time for me to dig my favorite Christmas movies out of the DVD cabinet. I've been watching "A Christmas Story" quite a bit lately, sympathizing with little Ralphie as he goes on his quest to acquire the coveted Red Rider 200-shot Carbine Action Air Rifle. My favorite Christmas movie of all time is most definitely "Christmas Vacation" with Chevy Chase. I just can't get enough of that movie! Unfortunately, my version of this movie is the European one and requires a special DVD player (or my laptop) to watch it, and my "special" DVD player is currently out of commission. I'm going to play around with it and see if I can fix it but if not, then I'll have to just keep watching it on my laptop. That's OK, though, because I can still watch little Ralphie, as well as the other fun favorites we have like "Jingle All the Way", "Scrooged", "Mixed Nuts", "Christmas With the Kranks" and, of course, all the fun animated classics with Rudolph, Santa, and Charlie Brown.

Some of my favorite Christmas rituals remain steady year after year. In addition to the obvious rituals of putting up a tree, buying presents, etc., there are the personal rituals that I derive such pleasure from: holiday portraits, candy cane and evergreen scented Christmas candles, special gingerbread and "nutcracker" flavored hot teas, candy cane flavored hot chocolate, and the incredible assortment of international Christmas delicacies that can only be purchased this time of year. I always look to Europe when purchasing yummy Christmas goodies, with Germany being at the very tippy top of my list. I love the German Christmas Stollen! In case anybody is unfamiliar with this yummy treat, it is a type of bread (not very sweet) with a heavy powdered sugar coating all over the outside of it. It's sweet because of the powdered sugar, but the bread itself is not sweet, but rather somewhat dry. It's not too terribly dry, but it's most definitely not a "moist" (like banana) bread. It can be found with or without raisins, but I like to purchase the Stollen with raisins in it, because then my older daughter won't touch it, and that means more for me! :-) Another favorite of mine is the German Lebkuchen, which is actually an acquired taste. I used to hate Lebkuchen when I was younger, but I've developed a taste for it over the years. It's a spicy gingerbread cookie and can be purchased plain, or coated in chocolate. I simply don't like the chocolate ones, I don't know why. The chocolate always tastes funny to me, but the plain ones are outstanding! Unfortunately, the plain ones are never sold by themselves, they are always (or so I've only found up to this point) sold in a variety pack with the chocolate coated ones. My daughter doesn't really like the gingerbread, but she loves the chocolate, so sometimes if I have these chocolate coated Lebkuchen, she'll pick off (and eat) the chocolate coating, then leave me the naked gingerbread cookie. It works for us. This past year we had a German exchange student (Gloria) for the benefit of my older daughter, Gabby, and Gloria brought me a new German treat called "Wibele" (pronounced "VEE-buh-luh"), which came with the recipe, so I might try to make it this year. Wibele is a snack-like treat, small, sweet, crunchy nuggets that look (at first glance) like dry cereal (or cat food, depending on your point of view!), but with much smaller nuggets. They actually even have a dry-cereal kind of taste to them as well. They're pretty good and if anybody wants the recipe, feel free to let me know. They look very easy to make, but are possibly somewhat time-consuming due to the tiny size of the nuggets. Remember those "Candy Dots" that came attached to the paper that are peeled off the paper and eaten? The Wibele are approximately that small, but I'm thinking they can probably be made a bit bigger, but I won't guarantee that.

One of the best pasts of having a baby is the beautiful portraits and fun snapshots that we either take or have taken of our little angels. Christmas is an especially fun time to have portraits taken and this year, being Annabelle's first Christmas, was an especially fun time for us. I took her down yesterday and got her portraits taken, but didn't actually purchase very many of the portraits themselves. Instead, I purchased a CD with all the poses on it, as well as the full copyright for all the pictures. So I now own the full rights to every single one of these pictures, and will purchase paper copies of them sometime after Christmas when our finances are a little better. Of course, I'm probably going to have to sell my car now, just to make up for the cost of this copyright release, but in my opinion it is worth it. I just *LOVE* photographers who sell me their copyrights! I was playing around on Photo Shop last night, and here's one of Annabelle's portraits the "normal" way (after I zoomed in and cropped some of the excess stuff out of it) and then that same picture, as it would have looked if it had been taken 100 years ago:





My mother is really into antiques and old-time things, and she actually has a couple of very old portraits that she found in various antique shops. I'm thinking of getting that old-timey portrait of Annabelle printed out and giving it to her for Christmas. I know she'd love it. I'm just wondering if it looks "real" enough to be an antique?!

If I could find a Christmas card that said something to the effect of: "Showing You a Little Love this Christmas", then this is definitely the portrait that I would put with it:

Annabelle was constantly lifting up her dress and, in that portrait (left), she did it right before the picture was snapped. I think it's adorable! And then below are a few more of the (38) portraits we had taken. I won't post all 38 portraits, as I find that somewhat cruel to the friends who are kind enough to sit and read all my ramblings! So here are a couple of the cuter ones:




Hmmm, does anybody know if Photo Shop can remove the background images? I'm trying to remove some of the background scenery and turn it into just a plain colored background, but I haven't figured out how to do it yet. Does anybody know if this is even possible, or am I wasting my time trying to figure it out when it can't even be done?

Annabelle and I are still reading "James and the Giant Peach" and were are at the point where the peach has come crashing down to earth. The people below, thinking the peach is actually a bomb coming to destroy them, have run for cover while the peach, tumbling furiously down, has just lodged itself onto the spiked needle-top of the Empire State Building. Oooh, it's getting exciting! What will happen next? We've also worked a few Flash Books ("The Sun" and "My Umbrella") and had a little mini-lesson about how rainbows are formed. Annabelle seemed really into it....or maybe it was just Mommy's undivided attention that Annabelle really loved. She is such a fun baby! How blessed we are to have her!

The Christmas Parade

Well, I am extremely disappointed at how Annabelle's Santa Cow pictures looked on paper. I sent the photos to the Wal-Mart photo lab to get printed out so that I could send them out to some of my less internet-friendly friends. Santa Cow came out OK, but Annabelle was a bit blurry and out of focus, and the lighting was yellowish. The wallet size pics are much better than the bigger ones, but I'm still very disappointed. Annabelle doesn't look blurry on my digital pic, but I guess maybe she is. Either that or my eyesight is going bad. I don't think pics can go to the lab clear and in focus, yet come back blurry and out of focus, so I guess the error is on me. What a shame! I'm actually too embarrassed to send these Santa Cow pics to my friends. Well, Santa Cow will be at this Chick-fil-A every Saturday until Christmas, so maybe I'll consider going back next weekend. I'm inclined to think that the restaurant was so empty today because people were probably back on the town square getting ready for the parade, so next weekend will probably be pretty busy, as usual. Oh well, I'll think about it.

After our photo shoot with Santa Cow, my parents, husband, Annabelle and I all headed down to the town square to watch the Christmas Parade. The weather was, in my opinion, perfect.....chilly but not cold. I'm posting a few pics here of the parade. I was kind of disappointed at how some of them came out...my camera has some "shutter lag" so to speak. I'd take what I knew was going to be a great shot, only to have my camera wait two seconds before it actually snapped it, giving me a messed up shot. Several of my subjects turned around right after they saw me push the button down on my camera, yet my camera didn't actually take the shot until the subject was actually turning away. I have an awful lot of pictures of various peoples' backsides now! *SIGH* Well, here are a couple of the non-backsides of people, as well as a couple of the floats.

Right Down Moo Moo Lane......

We did it! We made it to Chick-fil-A to see Santa Cow! Annabelle slept quite a bit later than usual (2 hours later to be exact), so I was a bit apprehensive about how the morning was going to turn out. I woke her up at 8:00am, fed the dog, prepared Annabelle's bottle, changed her diaper and got her dressed, then headed out the door. I was absolutely certain that we were going to meet with a crowded restaurant (this particular Chick-fil-A is ALWAYS crowded!) and in my mind we were already late. I wanted to be there at 8:30am sharp, since Annabelle is always her happiest when she first wakes up, but now we weren't going to make it there until 9:00am or so. Well, we got there and much to my surprise, the parking lot was practically empty. Hmmmm, was I here on the right day? I grabbed Annabelle's carseat and brought her inside (the hubby was with me) and as soon as I walked in I saw this enormous cow sitting next to a Christmas tree. Was that a stuffed cow? I felt a twinge of disappointment as I "realized" that this was an oversized stuffed animal. Then I saw the stuffed animal's foot tapping on the floor. Hmmm, was this a mechanical cow? The foot tapping was at a very steady beat, with very regular intervals in between the tapping. What on earth was this thing? I must have just stood there for several seconds too long because all of a sudden the cow waved at me. Yes, he was "real"! I went over to Santa Cow and he stood up and shook my hand. One of the ladies with him offered to take Annabelle's picture with Santa Cow and I happily let her. Naturally I brought my camera along, with fresh batteries, and snapped several shots myself. The bad thing is, of all the shots I took, only one was any good. The good thing is, that one good shot was a *really* good shot as far as I'm concerned. SO.....here it is.....the moment we've all been waiting for...
Annabelle and SANTA COW!!



She was in such a happy mood! It was great! Since we are on the topic of Santas, I decided to take a picture of the picture of Annabelle on Santas lap, and post it here in my blog. I searched the photo completely, and there are no copyright stamps anywhere on the back of the paper.....I read the envolope thoroughly, and there is no mention of this photo being copyrighted, and I even looked over the receipt and read every word on it....nothing about any kind of copyright. So, on that note, I am assuming that this photo is not copyrighted in any way, or there would be some kind of notice somewhere.....so, here it is - from yesterday - Annabelle and Santa Claus:





After our photo with Santa Cow, the three of us, along with my parents, decided to go downtown to see the parade. My older daughter was supposed to hang out with a friend of mine, but that eventually fell through. Anyway, the parade was a lot of fun. The weather was chilly, but not too terribly cold. They were tossing and/or handing candy and little goodies and trinkets out to the children. I grabbed a baseball cap that one of the companies was handing out, but left the candy for the kiddos. I took a TON of pictures, and will post a couple of them in a separate blog entry. I love the small town atmosphere so even though this parade doesn't come anywhere near the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, it was still quaint and charming.