Handmade Heaven: A Mini Holiday Shopping Guide

Yesterday I got to spend a couple hours at the Autumn Festival held at Canterbury Park in Shakopee this weekend. It’s basically a GIGANTIC arts & crafts fair…we’re talking hundreds of booths and thousands of attendees (which I find kind of funny since I’d never heard of the fair before!). Anyway, I just love going and walking around, by myself, for a couple hours, perusing the goods and taking a look at what others have created (not to mention doing some Christmas shopping!). I think I have found a new little tradition. 🙂 Last year I didn’t find a ton of booths that I loved, but yesterday I was happy to find a couple of really cute booths that I was pretty excited about!

My favorite was JennaLou Designs. Seriously, check out her website. Isn’t it cute?! Lots of cute handbags and accessories. I fell in love with this:

And this:

But there was lots of other cute stuff, too. I think I spent like a half hour at her booth! Be sure to check out her etsy shop.

Another booth I liked was Everything Unique Boutique, which had lots of fun kids clothing and accessories. The booth actually had WAY more than the website shows (and their best merchandise was at the booth, in my opinion :)), but the site gives you an idea. I scored these cute little monogrammed purses for Christmas presents for my girls 🙂 :

(um, yeah. The photo is backwards. Just picture it flipped the right way :)).

My third favorite booth was called Harmony Hill Signs. They had the most beautiful wooden picture frames/shelves/signs — but unfortunately their website is not currently working! Still, if you happen to visit an art fair in the near future, keep an eye out for them. They had some beautiful stuff!

…and thus concludes my 2010 Mini Holiday Shopping Guide from my travels at the craft fair. 🙂 Hope you find it helpful!

What are some good places you’ve found to shop for handmade stuff? Share your finds in the comments!

 

A Very Special Christmas Gift

It has been a wonderful, memorable Christmas for so many reasons. We’ve been blessed with time together and with family. God has been so gracious.

This year has held some difficult moments.

This past May, my sweet Grandma learned that, after 7 years in remission, her lymphoma had returned. She fought valiantly, but on July 16, Jesus called her home.

We are a tight knit family (my siblings and I the only grandchildren on that side of the family), and my grandma has always been a cornerstone of each holiday.

We knew this Christmas would be hard.

Last night, we held to our Christmas Eve tradition of going to the house my grandparents lived in. My aunt lived with my grandma for several years, and continues to live in that house. She did a wonderful job of making the same food and creating the same wonderful, warm atmosphere that we always enjoyed with my grandma. We had a wonderful time together, sharing in food, laughs, and gifts. Still, of course, Grandma’s absence was felt deeply.

Now my grandma was a very generous lady, and one of her favorite discoveries in her later years was a channel called QVC. 🙂 She’d often buy us items from QVC — particularly jewelry for my sisters, mom and I. In the past several months after her passing, I’ve often looked at the jewelry she’d given me and thought to myself “I need to treasure this all the more…I won’t be getting any more jewelry from Grandma”.

You can imagine the tears that sprung to my eyes last night when, at the end of the evening, my aunt presented my sisters, mom and I each with small boxes wrapped in gold paper. The tag on mine read: “To: Nikki , From: Grandma”.

My grandma had done some of her Christmas shopping early this year.

Early — like, before she even got sick. She found beautiful necklaces for both of my sisters, my mom and I. She ordered them, received them, looked at them, and tucked them away as Christmas gifts for us.

My aunt found them and carefully wrapped, labeled and presented them to us.

Each one of us got a different necklace. I LOVE mine…it’s what *I* would have picked out for myself. A lovely stone heart made of Irish Connemara Marble. Green — my favorite color.

Thank you God, for small graces, even as we celebrate the biggest one of all.

You are so kind.

In Loving Memory of Grandma E (pictured here with W, last Christmas)…

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire…

It’s the end of a long but wonderful day of Christmas cheer…I’m just nestled here on the couch, relaxing in front of the “fire”…

(is it weird that the room is starting to feel a bit warm and
I swear I am smelling a hint of smoke?)

Merry Christmas!

Huh?

Here’s a little thing I picked up at Marshall’s today.

It was so weird. And ugly. And bizarre. And cheap. How could I not?

Because every tree needs something that says:

“Merry Christmas from a Creepy Baby Dressed as a Lamb
while Wearing Mickey Mouse Ears”.

(*please also note the inexplicable “A Star is Born” phrase at the bottom of the ornament — backwards cuz I used my computer camera).

Deck the Halls…and walls…and floors…and such…

There’s nothing that warms a home quite like Christmas decorations do, is there? Here’s what we’ve got in our house this year:

1. A Tree

I’m a big believer in real Christmas trees, but for the 3rd year in a row we opted to go with our artificial little friend. His fragrance isn’t nearly as lovely as a real tree’s would be, but he’s a lot simpler to assemble and decorate, and — with 2 tiny ones around — I’m not as worried about someone pulling it over on him/herself or eating some needles or me being so scatterbrained that I forget to turn the Christmas lights off and our house burns down. So, fake tree it was this year. It was sort of an impulsive decision that we are already feeling a bit bad about. We do love them balsams (*name that movie). Oh well…”maybe yater” (as W would say :)).

Fake tree or real, the ornaments that adorn it are my favorite part. Our ornaments are a collection comprised of ornaments from our childhoods…and more recently too, I suppose. My family was *big* on ornaments as I grew up. My 4 siblings and I each had a box of our own ornaments, along with an itemized list of our ornaments reminding us of what year we got each one and who/where they were from. It sounds SO “type A”, but I am really thankful for it, and it’s a tradition I’d love to pass down to our kids. I love how so many of my ornaments bring back glimmers of memories from different times in my life. On our tree we’ve got pasta wreaths spray-painted gold and beaded pipe cleaner candy canes and loosely stitched stockings…and I love it.  Those “department store” type trees are beautiful — with the matching glass ornaments and ribbon and all that — but in my home I’ll take a personalized tree any year.

W had a great time helping us decorate the tree. As you can see, he decided that all the ornaments would look good on one branch 🙂 :

2. Nativity Scene

This was my “dream” nativity scene — I first eyed it while I was working at a Christian bookstore…and finally it became mine! It’s original home during the holiday season was in our bay window, with a lovely lighted garland behind it giving it just the right solemn glow.

However now that we’ve got a 2-year-old it’s new home is way up high on top of my china cabinet. 🙂

3. Advent Calendar(s)

Last year I set out on a quest for the perfect advent calendar — something that would tell the Christmas story in a simple yet fun (yet not overly cutesy) way. I didn’t come up with much. So far the best I’ve been able to do is find the cheap little cardboard kind with the perforated “doors” to open each day, along with this little number I scored after Christmas at Marshall’s last year:

It’s basically just a hanging tapestry with 25 square pockets on it and a little wooden thing-a-ma-jig that you move to a new pocket each day. It doesn’t do anything to tell the Christmas/advent story at all, and M has nicknamed it “house of the rising sun”…but W likes it, it’s a fun little way to count down the days til Christmas, and — I have to admit — it’s growing on me.

Those are the big decorations we’ve got going on in our house this year — what about you?

30 Minutes with the Seavers

Whenever I’m feeling like the house is a mess and I’m in a crunch to get things done, I think of my favorite episode of “Growing Pains” (yes, “Growing Pains”. Hear me out.) It’s the one where they are throwing a fancy party (which Donald Trump is going to be at), and realize that the date on the invitations was misprinted and they have a half an hour to get the party pulled together. Amazingly — they do it!

So this holiday season, if you find yourself stressed out with all that needs to be done around the house with not much time to do it in, do what I do: remember that if the Seavers can do it, so can you (and ignore that voice in the back of your head that keeps saying “It’s just a TV show”…)

A SubURBAN Christmas

I am ridiculously suburban. I love our quiet street, the sound of lawnmowers in the summer, the delightful squeals of laughter coming from neighborhood children playing in their backyards, and the fact that I am 2 minutes from a CUB Foods and a Scrapbooking store. Oh yes, and I drive an SUV.

On the contrary, I am not so much an urban person. For one thing, I am a terrible city driver. It stresses me out. And parallel parking? I am horrible at it. Horrible. Like, “People are probably watching me try to park and thinking to themselves ‘Oh look, there’s a suburban girl’ horrible.”  To me, the city has always seemed big and scary. I have always felt like this. I remember when my family took a trip to New York City when I was 6 and feeling terrified. The city was so big…and there were so many people…and why did that man come up to our car and start washing the windows without us asking him to?!

While in some respects my view of the city has changed since I was 6 (I now think a trip to NYC sounds like fun, so long as I am accompanied – and driven around by, if necessary – my husband :)), suburbia is still very much my comfort zone – and I’m quite happy that way. However, I am very grateful to have some pretty great girl friends who all happen to be pretty urban-minded, and who every once in awhile are able to give this suburban mommy a good healthy dose of city fun. Tonight was one such occasion. We met up at my friend Sarah’s house (she and her hubby live in a cozy little apartment near the Walker Art center) and together went to the Macy’s 5th (or is it 7th?) floor display of “The Nutcracker” followed by dessert and drinks (in my case a strawberry lemonade :)) at the Palamino. It was a fun, classy little evening filled with holiday cheer, decadent desserts and good conversation.

We utilized the wonderful Minneapolis skyway system, in which I found something utterly delightful: did you know there is now a Target there?! Apparently it’s been there for awhile, so…probably. I love it!! It’s like a comfortable little slice of suburbia, right in the heart of the city…

(And yes, I realize that a mid-evening walk through of a children’s Christmas display, a visit to a restaurant and a discovery of a major superstore in the middle of the skyway aren’t exactly what most would consider to be an all-out “night on the town” – but humor me.  :))

Yes, it was a nice little evening. My only regret was that I’d somehow forgotten that we’d all decided to dress up…so I showed up in a sweater, blue jeans and my brown shoes while everyone else was looking all elegant. Oops. At least I’d opted for my festive red pea coat instead of my black hooded winter vest, so I at least looked somewhat Christmas-y! I’m not sure how it had slipped my mind. I so enjoy getting dressed up, and am always looking for an excuse to use my little green sequined handbag, for which there never seems to be an appropriate occasion!  Oh well. Maybe next year…

A Christmas Message

Thanks to my friend Kim for passing this forward along my way:

 I CORINTHIANS 13 – A CHRISTMAS VERSION

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, I’m just another decorator.  If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not show love to my family, I’m just another cook.

If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home and give all that I have to charity, but do not show love to my family, it profits me nothing. If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, attend a myriad of holiday parties and sing in the choir’s cantata but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.

Love stops the cooking to hug the child.  Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the husband.  Love is kind, though harried and tired.  Love doesn’t envy another’s home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens. Love doesn’t yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful they are there to be in the way.  Love doesn’t give only to those who are able to give in return but rejoices in giving to those who can’t.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails.  Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust, but giving the gift of love will endure.

Merry Christmas and lots of love to you and yours!