Hung with Care, pt 2

My sister Maren posted her family's stockings to Flickr for us - you can see them here.  Don't forget to read the descriptions.  My favorite is Torin's, both because of the Bethlehem design and because she was so frazzled she made it backwards (knowing snicker.)

Hung (and Made) with Care, pt 1

 Some Christmas traditions are so ingrained in families that you don't even think about them.  It's not exactly that you assume other families do them, too.  It's that you don't even think about whether they do or not.

In my family, hand-made stockings are such a tradition.

My parents' stockings are long and skinny knit ones - like actually knitted by my mother's grandmother.  They're red, green and ivory, with their names knit around the top.  Great-grandmother Marie made them for everyone in the family, including my Dad when he married in.  And those stockings are maddeningly stretchy, making them tough to fill to the top year after year.

My Grandma Younce, my dad's mom, made the stockings for my brothers and sisters and me.  And most or all of my cousins on the Younce side.  They're all sweet beaded things, each different but along the same lines.  My mom told me they were made from kits - she guesses Bucilla - which were very popular at the time. 

 We loved them and I was always so excited to see mine again each December.  I also thought it was so cool that it looked like my name was spelled with an "X."  Love you, Grandma.

Then when my oldest sister was 19, she got married.  Suddenly we had a new family member.  And he needed a stocking.  So my mom, queen of clever applique, took the fact that he was a competitive skier, and whipped out a cool skiing stocking.  And a multi-generational tradition was born.

As in-laws, and then children, started to join the clan, each got a stocking made for them.  By my mid-twenties, though still single, I decided I wanted a "grown-up" stocking, so I asked my mom to make me one.  I wanted black velvet and Chinese silk.  And this is what I got:

 So freaking cool, I love it.  I added a little beading to the black and gold nativity fabric she worked in.

 Then when I did marry, it was time for Ed to get a "Younce" stocking.  We all know he lives for elk hunting, so I wanted a mountain scene, and my mom and I together came up with a red-headed shepherd boy sleeping in the mountains (Ed can fall asleep anywhere, anytime.)  We even found an elk button to sew on, at the base of the mountains.  My amazingly meticulous friend Kat sewed the name on, bless her, because I just didn't have the skills or patience.

 A few years later, Hazel was born. I remember wanting something simple, elegant, and above-all, something I could make myself!  Which meant not a lot of sewing.  But beading, I could do.  We were living in New York, and since Ed was always at work, I had nothing but time on my hands after Hazel went to bed.  My sister Tona helped me with the icicle-like beading off the bottom. 

 When it was Ginger's turn, I was ready for a little more work (and some more help from my mom.)  I wrestled with a few ideas, and, because of her name, settled on a plate of cookies and milk by the chimney.  My mom made the entire chimney, fire and stockings.  I made the milk and cookies.  I'm not proud of the iron-on letters, but I've gotten used to them. 

 Truth be told, I've had an idea for a different stocking for Ginger nagging at me for several years.  I even bought some of the stuff for it once.  One of these days I'll actually make it, then she can pick one or alternate, whatever she wants.

Last year was Poppy's first Christmas.  And I just wasn't up to the weighty creative task of designing or executing a stocking.  So she just used my old childhood one.  This year, I was more ready.  I had a few ideas, and started to hone in on the idea of a bauble ornament.  First, I sought inspiration.

2011 US Christmas stamps

Window decals at World Market

A DVD gift box that was tucked in my Christmas wrapping box - this was the final spark I needed!

 Getting started was the hardest part, but once I did, I worked really hard for a couple of weeks, and voila!

I traced Ed's for the basic shape (all of ours are slightly different shapes and sizes and I like it that way.)  The sock is of heathered green felt and the top is white minky.  I shaped the name out of pink tinsel wire, then tacked it on every 1/4 to 1/2 inch or so.

 By sheer luck I found these red-and-silver flat bauble ornaments at Michael's - that place is a treasure trove for projects like this!  They were the perfect accent to fill in the negative space.  I also love the loopy wired mesh ribbon at the top - I wouldn't have thought of that except for the stamps.

 The DVD case gave me the idea for an offset center, and I invested in a rotary cutter and self-healing board for cutting it out.  I wasn't sure what to put in the center until I found some spray-painted ferns at Michael's and thought they would do the trick.

 Mirror sequins hanging off the bottom finished it off.

 But I just couldn't stop there and had to bead my heart out on the back.  One big pack of mixed sequins makes for serious colorful fun.

 So there are our family's stockings.  I've solicited a few other family members to photograph and/or write about their stockings...seriously, I'm proud of mine but you've got to see theirs.  Individually and collectively, they are amazing works of art.  It's one of my favorite Christmas traditions.

Art Tuesday: Paper Bag Turkeys

 Fall and winter, and especially the holidays, just lend themselves to arts & crafts, don't they?  I have been working on making Poppy's stocking this year, and for this fiber-arts-challenged Mom, that is a feat.  But Art Tuesday continues to be a balm and creative beacon in our otherwise busy, busy weeks. 

In November, the week before Thanksgiving, we made these paper-bag turkeys.  I will direct you here for the instructions, and just let the pictures and a few comments tell the rest.

We put the "white meat" popcorn in a Ziploc bag so the brown paper wouldn't get greasy, and stuffed some tissue paper in on the sides.

We discovered Poppy loves cashews.

The "stuffing" was made of chocolate chips, craisins, almonds and cashews.

The "dark meat" that went in the legs was caramel corn.

Ta-da!!!

Christmas Books & DVD's

Well. Christmas is in full swing around here, and if you've been with me for more than one Christmas, you know I'm kinda obsessed with accruing the perfect Christmas book collection.  I collect.  I review.  I purge.  I collect.  All over again.  We're still in picture books this year, mostly, but some are longer than we could sit through in the past.  I've put all our best favorites to date in an Amazon list, but it is ever-changing:

Our Favorite Children's Christmas Books

And since DVD's wouldn't fit on the same list (limit of 40 items), I started another list of those.  We don't have that many Christmas DVD's, but the collection has been started with these good ones:

Our Favorite Children's DVDs

And kinda sorta speaking of movies, I have surprised myself this year by being very into cheesy made-for-TV Christmas movies.  Not usually my thing.  But I am longing for sentimentality.  And I am definitely finding it.  Mostly on Lifetime, some on Hallmark and other channels.  Occasionally I even find some quality programming.  But mostly it's sappy predictable stuff.  And I am lapping it all up like a hungry kitten. 

Unrelated pickie of the girls at a friend's Christmas party last weekend. 

NYC part 4: Saturday

 Yeah, I'm still not done writing about my New York weekend.  I know, you're over it.  You read about the Chocolate Show.  The rest is just touristy, it's true.  But I'm still gonna write it.

Saturday we had every intention of heading downtown to Doughnut Plant for breakfast.  Wouldn't you like to start your day with a creme brulee or coconut cream doughnut?  This place has been on my list to try since before I lived in New York (that's 7 years ago), ever since I saw them on the Food Network making rose petal glazed doughnuts for Valentine's Day.  I lived in Brooklyn for 3 years, and do you think I ever made it there?  (It's harder than you'd think.) 

So we started walking the block-and-a-half to the 7 train, but the the subway entrance was closed.  Which meant we had to walk another block-and-a-half to Grand Central subway station to catch a 6 train.  No biggie.  But that also meant we had to cross Lexington Avenue, which when we did, we saw this.

"What's going on?" we wondered.  We decided to walk north a bit and find out.  And would you believe, it was an honest-to-goodness street fair.  Two blocks from our hotel.  And we almost missed it.  But we didn't.  Going to a street fair is something else that was always on my list, but never happened when I lived there.  They go on from about May to November, a different location in the city each weekend.  It's a lot of cheap stuff, but some great stuff too, that you can't really find anywhere else.  So we walked and shopped and shopped and walked. 

 Then we remembered we were hungry. And there was a crepe stand.  So Doughnut Plant will have to wait, because we couldn't. 

 Nice choice, Juli, getting strawberries and Nutella.  But I got banana and Nutella, and that's awfullly hard to beat. 

 So what did we buy?  Oh, who can remember it all?  I got some hair thingies - a cute lady with gorgeous long hair showed me how to do my hair up in a fancy chopstick.  She let me film her on my phone so I could practice at home, but I had to promise not to film her face or put her on YouTube, so I guess I won't put her on here...but it was cool!  She did my hair for me nice and tight, so I know it can be done...but strangely I haven't been able to do it like her since I got back.  I think the street fair was magic.

We also got gifts for the kids.  It was the perfect place for gifts.  Juli got her daughter a stinkin' cute tiger winter hat.  I got my girls pretty cloth scarves - they love to borrow mine - and were they the HIT when I got home!  Ginger has worn hers to school every day.  And...some other cool stuff. 

So, only a few blocks from the hotel, we were already heavy laden so we made a quick dash back to drop off our stuff.  But only after popping into the Gap, which was also on the way, and which had an irresistible window display we had walked past a hundred times by now.  Which contained this - did I mention irresistible? - kids' skirt.  Which I went ahead and got for Ginger's birthday.  And a shirt to match. Who can resist this?!

And here's the Chrysler Building in the daytime.  Reminds me of The Fountainhead.  Just love it.  

Moving on.  Shopping is very tiresome, but we pressed on into what turned out to be an amazingly gorgeous day.  Since we were sore and blistered from Friday, we figured, let's walk the mile-plus across the Brooklyn Bridge!  Despite our ailments, it was a great idea to get some sunshine and views.  

 So one of our reasons to walk to Brooklyn was for Grimaldi's extremely famous coal-brick oven pizza.  When we got there it was about 2pm on a Saturday.  And the line outside was down the block, about a 1 1/2 hour wait.  So...our official story is that we came that far, and had that good pizza.  An alternative possibility is that the line at an inferior pizza place around the corner was much shorter, and we wanted to make the most of our last day in New York, so we didn't and said we did, so to speak.  Either way, we had great New York style pizza.

What was next?  Central Park of course.  Because it's so close to Brooklyn.  And because it's so amazing, and it's fall, and Juli wanted to see it.  She realized quickly the scope of the park, something that's almost impossible to imagine until you see just how big it is.  We got there just at dusk, and walked and talked until it was dark.  It reminded me of Time and Again.  If you like New York, or history, or time travel books, I highly recommend it. 

A sidenote: On Thursday, Juli immediately observed everyone in NY wears black.  I hadn't noticed, but it was true, as evidenced in this photo.  Didn't stop Juli from wearing her lime green trench, or me from my purple fleece...mostly because those were the only jackets we'd brought.

 By now it was about 5pm and we weren't hungry for dinner yet, so we chose to kill some time at the Empire State Building.  And here's what I have to say about that.  It is incredible, it is beautiful, and I'm so glad to have seen the view at night.  It is also one of the worst tourist traps I've ever visited...and, being from D.C., that is saying something.  Just know, if you ever go, it is not like in Sleepless in Seattle.  Enter, go up an escalator, wait in line to go through security, wait in line to get tickets (and they ain't cheap - and the "laminated" souvenir map ain't laminated), wait in line for the first elevator.  Go up to the 80th floor, wait in line for the second elevator.  Finally come out at the 86th floor observatory, which has an indoor enclosed area and and outdoor observatory like in Sleepless but much more narrow and crowded.  And breezy!  It was the first time all trip I was actually cold. Good thing I had my new scarf from the street fair, how do you like it?

But like I said, the views were spectacular. 

 Then when you're done, you guessed it, you wait in line for the first elevator, get down to the 80th floor, where the only way to get to the next elevator is through the gift shop, wait in line again, then finally get down to ground level and taste your freedom again.  Beginning to end it took us almost 3 hours, and the crowd wasn't even that bad. 

Time for dinner!  This time we did make it to Baluchi's and Juli was kind enough to let me order all my old favorites - samosas, naan, raita, lamb rogan josh and chicken korma.  Everything was as good as ever - love that place!

But for dessert, and as punctuation to our entire escapade, we needed something extremely special.  No Paris Baguette, definitely no Crumbs.  What we needed was the BEST dessert New York had to offer.  Luckily, Brian had already told us where that was. 

Kyotofu is a cute-but-chic little Japanese dessert bar & bakery in the hoppin' Hell's Kitchen district.  And it makes a Chocolate Souffle cupcake that New York Magazine voted the best in the city.  Awfully surprising for something made with white miso, Japanese bread flour and tofu...and not even frosted!

But when we got there, the menu had other enticings as well.  We actually ordered the fresh ginger crème brûlée with green apple sorbet and vanilla bean tuile (and something purpley-black and crunchy on top, very delicious.)  Amazing.  Fabulous.  And we got a couple cupcakes to go.

Saturday ended with our great feat of hailing a cab...on a very busy taxi night, no less.  After having several stolen from us, and the last from some very cute girls in short skirts, we got aggressive, and slunk exhausted into the back seat for a rather harrowing, but, in the end, safe ride back to the Hilton.

We stayed up late packing, a little depressed to be leaving.  But even well-fed, chocolate-filled, sites-and-sounds intensive, perfect-weather, seriously-perfect weekends in New York have to come to an end.  

Next post:  we head home; Disco Mom reflects.

I'm Thankful for Cute Pictures