Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all the wonder and joy of Christmas!

[Confession: there may have been a helium balloon that escaped up to the cathedral ceiling just before I took that photo of Joshua...]

Toddler Christmas shenanigans

I was surfing Pinterest the other day and saw what I thought was an absolutely genius idea -- create a little felt Christmas tree for your toddler to decorate and redecorate, to help keep his curious hands away from the grown-up Christmas decorations.  It's a cute little decoration and toddler distraction device all in one!  What could possibly go wrong?

I was planning a Michaels trip for some Christmas decor already, so I added some felt to my list.  And over Thanksgiving weekend, while watching Star Wars with David while the kids were in bed, I cut out a tree, some ornaments, and some felt presents, to create our very own little Christmas flannelgraph (side note: throwback to Sunday School fun!).


Super cute, right?  All very simply made of felt (with the J, S, and present ribbons hot-glued on).  I couldn't wait for Joshua to wake up and see "his" tree.

And, well, part of my fond vision came true.  Joshua sure loves the felt circles!  It's the latest in a series of things he can gather and sort, so he loves taking them off the tree, stacking them all in a big pile, and either carrying them around the house or FLINGING them violently about...

But the whole distracting-him-from-other-Christmas-decorations thing?  Not so much.


Yep, that's a large stack of felt circles in his hands...  (This snapshot was taken a few days before our Sophia ornament arrived.  And a few minutes before Joshua grabbed the "white cookie" and tried to eat it.)

Thankfully, in the last week or so, I've taught him not to grab at the staircase ornaments or our little tabletop tree.  But he still insisted on non-standard play with the felt ornaments:






What a cute little stinker.  :)

I ended up appealing to Joshua's sense of order and organization in order to entice him to actually put the ornaments on the felt tree.  Once he realized he could sort the ornaments, he went to town playing with the tree:


Star at the top, then the lights, then the circles, then the presents.  One of these days, he'll likely also sort the shapes by color...

The ornaments still spend way more time on the floor or tucked away in random corners than on the felt tree, but Joshua is having a blast playing with the set, so I'm going to call this a mommy win.  ;)  It's a good exercise in picking my battles and letting go of how things are "supposed" to be in the name of allowing Joshua to have some uninhibited fun, too, so it's good for me, right?  It's what I tell myself every time I hear him giggle uproariously as he throws and gathers and throws and gathers and throws and gathers the felt circles...  :)

Merry Christmas!

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel!

Merry Christmas!

Lo, how a rose e'er blooming,
From tender stem hath sprung!
From Jesse's lineage coming,
As men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright,
Amid the cold of winter
When half spent was the night.

Isaiah 'twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind
With Mary we behold it,
The Virgin mother kind.
To show God's love aright,
She bore to us a Savior
When half spent was the night.

The shepherds heard the story
Proclaimed by angels bright,
How Christ, the Lord of Glory
Was born on earth this night.
To Bethlehem they sped
And in the manger they found Him,
As angels heralds said.

This Flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor
The darkness everywhere;
True man, yet very God,
From sin and death he saves us,
And lightens every load.

Christmas Traditions: The Tree in Palmer Square

Every year, the weekend after Thanksgiving, Princeton has its own tree lighting in Palmer Square, a very upscale stretch of boutiques across the street from the university. All the stores put up these beautiful garlands of fir boughs, pine cones, and red ribbon -- and since there are lots of stone archways throughout the square, there are tons of these garlands and lights everywhere. But the real highlight is the massive tree in the center of the square. It towers over all of the buildings, and is covered in thousands of lights.

So this is more of a town tradition than a Keddie family tradition... The only "family tradition" part of all of this is that every December, I walk by Palmer Square and tell myself I need to remember to take some pictures, and every December, I forget.

But not this year!

We made a date night of it tonight, with the specific purpose of walking to Palmer Square to take pictures. It actually snowed a bit this morning, and even though it had turned to rain by noon, there was still a little left on the ground tonight when we took our walk. It was a perfect, crisp, winter evening, snow crunching under our feet as we strolled down Nassau Street...

Yes, okay, so we made a stop at the bank before continuing on our romantic moonlit stroll. We've been so busy this week, with Christmas parties and other events, that we had to multitask a bit on our date night. But I was already in picture-taking mode, so here's an example of the garlands strewn about all over Palmer Square. Look how pretty it is!

We got to the square, and saw this poor guy all covered in snow... I think the statue is supposed to represent a university student, diligently reading while waiting at the bus stop. My dad always gets a kick out of this statue -- I can't tell you how many pictures we have of him sitting next to it, or of me and/or my brothers sitting around and/or on top of him. He's almost life-sized, so it almost works as a picture conceit...

Then we made it to Palmer Square proper. Isn't it quaint? Although it was all built at the same time, in the 1940s, as a part of an urban renewal project, the architects took the time (and had the money) to design each unit separately, with a mixture of styles and materials, so it looks like the buildings grew together over time. The stores are mostly super high-end boutiques, with the occasional chain store like Coach or Ralph Lauren -- so we only go there for window shopping purposes. They really do it all up right for Christmas!

And then, of course, the main attraction -- the Palmer Square tree. It's a massive old tree, with slightly thinning branches and shaggy greenery, so it looks a little sad in the summer. But in December, those seeming flaws come together to make for a stunning Christmas tree -- because of the thinning branches, you can see all the lights on both sides of the tree at once, since the lights on the opposite side shine through the gaps in the branches. And the shagginess of the greenery catches the light and looks majestic at night time. There's a metaphor in there somewhere (I'm thinking something along the lines of the Velveteen Rabbit), but instead of trying to be witty, I'll leave you with a picture of the tree itself:

Christmas Traditions: Our Little Tree

One of the (many) things I love about the Advent season is getting to establish our own family Christmas traditions. Since we always spend Christmas with one set of parents or the other, we haven't really gone all out in terms of decorating our own little apartment... But we've slowly introduced a few annual traditions, which we add a little to every year. Last year, we finally bought ourselves a little artificial Christmas tree -- it's the perfect size for our apartment. And by "perfect size," I mean "fits on top of our subwoofer."

Isn't it cute?

This year, we decided to add a new tree-trimming tradition: stringing popcorn and cranberry garlands!

We approached this project as we approach all other projects -- by starting out with lots of internet research. I read Martha Stewart's directions, and several "fun crafts to do with little kids" websites, and figured I would split the difference. It was actually really easy, and lots of fun -- I think this new tradition is a keeper! And the garlands look really cute on our tree.

I totally overestimated the number of cranberries needed for our little Charlie Brown tree... David raised an eyebrow when I came back to the cart with three boxes of fresh cranberries, and looked quizzically at me when I tried to explain that Martha used nine boxes to decorate her 9' living room tree, so 3 boxes should be right for us... Next time, I'm totally listening to him. He's better at the numbers and stuff.

So after finishing the garlands for the tree, and looking at the two and a half leftover boxes of cranberries... I decided to keep going, and put garlands up elsewhere. :)

Garlands are now gracing our living room bookcases. I particularly like the way they look next to our Early Church Fathers set. :)

And we still have two full boxes of cranberries left. And loads of popcorn. So either I'm going to garland the entire apartment, or we'll be eating lots of homemade cranberry sauce this month...

More posts on our Christmas traditions to come soon!