small wonders

Mmm. A lovely holiday so far over here. We are recovering from all the fun we had at our string of holiday events. We were hoping to avoid the overwhelm, and managed to spread the fun over several days which worked great. Only now we are tired and ready to spend some time quietly playing and hanging out together. We hosted a Christmas Eve dinner at our house. The night before the event I sat on the stairs and wondered where on earth we were going to put all the people we'd invited, but we managed just fine. This was the first gathering we'd held at our house since it has grown from a wee cabin, and it felt good to fill up our living room with friends and food and babes.
And Christmas day was lovely- a slow, quiet morning where Ari opened presents and played with each one before moving on to the next. We generally want to keep the toy part of the holidays simple, with only a few meaningful gifts and lots of focus on the traditions and friends and family part, and I'd say this was a success. We exchanged our handmade gifts for each other on solstice (another post!) and just had a few special things in the stockings and under the tree- some furniture for the farmhouse, a tomten and fox wooden figures, a pair of secondhand skates, a couple books. The marble in the top picture is a very big hit, a gift from Ari's grandparents and aunt and uncle. And Dorian got a few small treasures too. We had Christmas dinner with family and friends and did our annual hike despite the cold. I had Dorian in the sling with a borrowed parka zipped over top and managed to stay warm enough. And the abundance of good food helped too.

I have not done a good job of taking photographs of the various projects we have been working on. I will try to gather up the finished crafts and photograph them for the archives (that would be this blog.) The stockings I finished just in time, there have been a few glimpses of them in progress, and here they are in action. This was my first real embroidery project and I enjoyed it. I used Wee Wonderful's free stichette pattern; I have a few more of her patterns sitting in my sewing room awaiting the embroidery needle. I had Perry help me alter them a bit to have each one be a little different and have each little elf holding something that is meaningful for the boys. Ari's is holding a star (the meaning of his middle name,) and Dorian's is holding a candle (his middle name means "peace.") All the other projects will make their way here soon, now that all the surprises are out!