holiday traditions

December 20th, 2007

Every year my mom (hi mom) would somehow manage find a bird’s nest to put on our christmas tree. I grew up in Minnesota where there is several feet of snow and it’s ridiculously cold come christmas, so finding a bird’s nest is no small feat in December. So for the holiday traditions exchange one of the things I made was a nest. I was lucky enough to find a real nest (abandoned, of course, it’s cold here!) the very morning I was boxing up my package to send. It puts my little ruffle nest to shame, but I suppose my nest has a modern aesthetic (take that, bird).

The patchwork bit in the middle is a needlebook that I made for storing my partner’s popcorn stringing needles. We would string popcorn and cranberries most christmases, but I don’t think the popcorn string ever got all that long because, well, we would eat all the popcorn. The gingerbread man is a little stuffed ornament (I posted a pattern here and there are more I made here). We would make gingerbread men (and ladies) every year and before they would go in the oven we would give them extra legs, or no legs, two heads, six arms, basically creating an army of mutant gingerbread men that we would then cover in sprinkles and hang on the tree.

Now that I think about it, there was a lot of food on our tree growing up. I’ve always wanted to decorate my tree completely with food, not just popcorn strings and gingerbread, but gumdrop garlands and pretzel angels and marshmallow snowmen. But we have always had dogs, so half the tree would be eaten once we turn our backs. And now that we have two little kids they would pick up where the dogs left off and we’d be left with a bare tree. So maybe someday I’ll have a little tree way up high that I can decorate to my heart’s content.

That’s it. My package is somewhere between here and western australia now. I hope it (and our traditions) will be well received. I’m going to add this post to the sew mama sew Handcrafters’ Holiday meme because I’ve enjoyed reading everyone else’s posts.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Posted in swaps.

8 Responses to holiday traditions

  1. mom says:

    And one year I made red and green popcorn balls for the tree when the twins were just one year old, When the balls would disappear, all you needed to do was look for the red or green-colored mouths,cheeks,noses,hands… The rule was no-eating of the gingerbread men until it was time to take the tree down. By then the cookies were cement but the kids ate them anyway. Crunch.
    I still have the bird’s nest (although I like your homemade one!) and it can be bequeathed to you anytime.

  2. caroline says:

    Who was it in the family who took the perfect bite out of a gingerbread man-cookie hanging on the lower branch of the Christmas tree? I can’t remember who did it, but it was a perfect bite in one of the legs. Very funny!

  3. Jodie says:

    Gorgeous traditions, Thankyou for sharing your gingerbread man pattern, I have just finished one for my daughter. Have a great Christmas

  4. wow what a great tradition!! Love the package.

  5. Bex says:

    Merry Happy to you! The paper arrived & it’s so cute…something cute for you on it’s way too! Xxx

  6. Karen says:

    The gingerbread man is just fantastic – so perfect and so lovely!

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