Winter Wishes

Wonderful Wishes to everyone. Whatever "Winter Holiday" you celebrate may it be bright and happy.

I was invited to be an Artist On call this month for Red Lead. It's a wonderful shop in St Louis, MO that has the neatest vintage items for altered art. I found them through an internet friend ( Thanks so much Sally !) and am so glad I did. Their collage sheets are awesome and so is everything else they have. One drawback is that I don't live close enough to take advantage of their awesome looking Workshops. I wish I could be at every single one. We visited there this summer and Hubby still has no idea how much money I spent there. A link to their site is http://redlead.typepad.com/ . Please visit , you'll love it. I promise.

This is the card they posted. I forgot to photograph them before I sent them in so this is the only picture I have : (

I love Christmas Trees !

I am pretty sure that we all love Christmas trees. There is a little magic in each one of them. This time of year when I am through for the day with all of my projects and before I head to bed, I like to sit in the living room with only the tree lights on. We always have a fresh cut one and maybe there will be a day when I break down and have an artificial one, but as long as I am physically able there will be a tree in my house at Christmas. The box we keep our ornaments in has remnants of every tree we have had in our house. A piece of a branch or the slice of the trunk my husband cuts off of the bottom before we put it in the stand. Some of the little bits of branches still smell divine. Each ornament must be placed on the tree so that it dangles freely, ( my one and only rule.) Oh! the memories on that tree. I have ornaments from my grandmothers tree and my mothers tree, and many ornaments my children made over the years. When the ornaments are all on, there must be silver tinsel hung on every branch. (Well ok, another rule of mine.) Yeah, it looks kind of Retro but that is my image of a Christmas Tree that I hope I pass on to my kids. We will never have a designer tree. Just good old green tree with multi colored old fashioned lights and more ornaments than I can count. Hmmm.. that might be interesting to try and count them all. I just thought of another rule..everyone in the family must hang at least one ornament on the tree. Luckily everyone likes to help except my hubby. He will do his obligatory ONE ornament but that satisfies him.

So before I go to bed tonight, I'll fix my hot tea and sit in the dark looking at my beautiful tree and see just how many different things about Christmases of my past I am able to remember tonight. Magic!