I’d just like to pop in and say Happy New Year! It’s been a lovely winter break around here these last several days, even though I’ve been working quite a bit this week—more than in most years, actually. I’m glad to have the work, and yet still yearn for the downtime, especially while everyone is at home.

There has been lovely block play,

some reading of How to Train Your Dragon, and quite a bit of cozy “Avatar: The Last Airbender” viewing.

Ian tackled some home renovation projects, including fixing a gate and finishing the Hearth Project (which was started and abandoned half finished more than eight years ago). Here is the beautiful result:

Lucas has practiced on his new skateboard from uncle Jon.

And Asher has worn his new chaps and vest (a precious family heirloom of our friends, loaned to us while they fit) in a most creative way.

So, that’s pretty normal right, for the last days of a year: continuing on, finishing, fixing, solving, resting, mulling, embracing new challenges, learning new skills, reinventing old stuff to be new again?

Relax. Review. Renovate. Remember. Reinvent.

Well, it’s normal around here.

Wishing you all the best in the New Year!

Asher is really into dragons. He has been playing dragon for quite some time, but we were recently inspired by this book, Tell Me a Dragon, by Jackie Morris. It is simply beautiful and I fully recommend it. It was published in 2009 by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books.

We have been wanting to make some wooden toy figures for a long time, so making him a dragon for Christmas seemed like just the right thing. We used a scroll saw with a blade that turned out to be too lightweight for the job, and yet, it got the job done.

I drew the dragon on paper and cut it out, then I traced it onto a piece of pine. I wish I had paid more attention to the back side of the board, as the back was flawed and we didn’t notice until our dragon was cut out. (Thank you, Ian, for doing the scary work with the saw.) At this point, we were so pleased with our cutout that there was no turning back.

I used regular old acrylic craft paints, slightly watered down, to make a kind of color wash. The wood absorbed the wetness quickly, but there were a few seconds with each application when the colors would blend nicely like watercolors. I painted this dragon in several sessions because I needed to let it dry in between.

The face was last, and I’ll admit I was really scared I’d mess up on the face! I was hoping to achieve a face that looked both friendly and fierce—kind of a tall order! (I am really pleased with how the tail works like a handle. It feels really sturdy.)

Of course, what do you do with just a dragon? Along the way, we created a knight and gave him a horse to ride. The horse had to be to scale to the knight, who was done first, but couldn’t be as big as the dragon. Tricky!

Ian was really clever with the knight’s paint job, I think. They look marvelous together. The figures were sanded lightly after painting to smooth them, then finished with a beeswax and lavender furniture polish. They smell and feel delightful.

Now, let’s hope Asher plays with them!

It’s been so sweet, this little Christmas bubble. I want to hibernate here for a good long while. My sons and my husband are at home all this week, too, so we have lots of good family time ahead.

Our Christmas was wonderful. We’re always very busy right up to the end of Christmas Day, visiting with family. But we have carved out a few very happy hours at home on Christmas morning and they are most precious!

May he always rejoice at the sight of a new book! Santa brought Dragonology for Lucas.

Asher was most impressed with the gold-wrapped chocolate coins. Santa brought him a dragon book, Tell Me a Dragon, and a stuffed seal backpack.

Lucas’s other Santa gift was Fuzzoodles (as seen on TV!) : They’re like chenille pipe cleaners with really long fuzz. They come with Mr. Potato Head-style eyes, mouths, noses, feet, etc., and can be used again and again to make silly creatures. So far I’m pretty happy with these, especially since both of my boys are able and happy to play with them.

More scenes from Christmas morning (my, it seemed dark!): A handwork basket for Lucas, complete with crochet hook and assorted yarns including some handspun ones (from Syrendell). New books like How to Train Your Dragon, the Eight Year Old Legend Book, and number 1 in the Nathaniel Fludd Beastologist series. (I sure hope he ends up liking sci-fi and fantasy as much as we do.) Playing with the gnomes we made.

Ian and I lovingly crafted a number of wooden toys and a pretend-play costume. Here is Asher’s new wooden dragon, designed and crafted by me and Ian. Painting this was so much fun! I used a watered-down wash of acrylic paint and sealed it with a beeswax polish. It smells wonderful, as do the rainbow wooden gnomes we made.

Here is a “remote control” airplane that Ian made for Asher. There’s a handle on the end of the stick that acts like a joystick, tilting the wings as it flies. Ian made stilts for Lucas, too!

We also visited with family on both sides Christmas Day and everyone seems to be doing great! Even RoRo was dressed up and looking happy when we saw her at my parents’ house. I couldn’t begin to enumerate all the amazing gifts we received and I’m feeling extremely grateful and also overwhelmed by it all. Certainly presents do not make the holiday, but I admit I am awestruck at the generosity we are paid. We appreciate this so much. I don’t know where we are going to put it all!

We were proud to give a number of homemade gifts this year, including poplar cutting boards, nature table decorations, herbal glycerin soaps, photo books, and one wacky googly-eye jar. Plus a small assortment of books. Honestly, it wouldn’t be Christmas without books.

Our home filled up Christmas night with our beautiful, talented, magical, loving friends. Thank you, my darlings, for filling our home with warmth, love, and laughter. Thank you for spending your Christmas with us. You inspire and fortify us.

And then … the long day ended in the wee wee hours.

In the morning, our time to relax came. A CitiBlocks tall ship, indoor hovercraft-spaceship-thingy, coffee and reading a biography of Cleopatra, trying out Lucas’s homemade stilts, attempting to skateboard for the first time, looking at pictures, a Da Vinci picture book, wearing the wool sweater my mother knitted for me, a bite of Belgian chocolate, roasted root vegetables, popcorn and The Princess Bride, pajamas all day, crystal growing kit, and snickerdoodles = Best. Boxing. Day. Ever.

I can’t say much about these Christmassy doings yet. Some of what we are making are for our kiddos, but some are for friends and family and I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Suffice it to say, we are spending some cold, cold hours outside in the garage …

We are struggling to find secret moments without the boys watching …

And I am using power tools!

I think I’m safe in sharing this now, given I’m pretty sure Asher doesn’t read my blog yet. This is a Christmas gift for him.

I am repurposing a sleeveless linen blouse of mine into a king’s or knight’s tunic. I don’t wear this anymore, and the fabric is so soft and lovely. I’ve bought new buttons that look like medieval devices to replace the buttons on the blouse.

I am also sewing him a fancy crown to wear. I have noticed that the children at his preschool all race to claim the fancy gold and silver fabric crowns that are available for pretend play. I am hoping this will be just the perfect gift for him. (Honestly he doesn’t want for anything.) What’s doubly awesome is that I already had this gold lame in my stash. Thank goodness for all those costume parties, no?

I bought the ribbon trim and the jewels for this costume. The hand-sewn crown is almost finished. I want to hot-glue the jewels, in addition to stitching them on.

I’m planning on sewing the ribbon trim onto the tunic as well. The final touch will be to sew a cape onto the shoulders of the tunic. My vision is that it will all be one piece (tunic and attached cape), and I have a gorgeous purple peplos that I’m sacrificing to make the cape.

Wish me luck! Today is the last day of school, so from this afternoon on, my kids will be home and working on things secretly will become trickier.

Although I used to go all out when wrapping gifts, in recent years I’ve become … let’s say …  somewhat busier and lacking time for such frippery. In fact, lately, my answer to labeling packages at Christmas has been simply to pull out my black or red Sharpie and scribble directly onto the wrapping paper. Frankly, it kills me to spend money on this stuff.

I’m still lacking time, but this week I had a sick boy home for two days with a fever, and whenever that happens he begs me to come up with things for him to do to pass the time at home while I’m working.

So, we made some simple gift tags from recycled (repurposed?) paper. Not fancy. Not fine. But fun, useful, and it couldn’t be easier.

Yep. It’s a paper grocery sack, cut roughly into squares and stamped with my two Christmas stamps. My mother-in-law gave me the snowman when she retired from teaching third grade. The tree stamp is one we bought to make gifts about five years ago. I love it when we can do a project without buying anything new.

I’m not sure why, but I love the paper that grocery sacks are made from. Maybe it was all those years I covered my schoolbooks with them. Anyway, if you follow the folds of your grocery sack, you’ll basically cut squares. It wasn’t at all important to me that they be perfectly square or all the same size, or anything like that.

Lucas did a great job stamping these. They need only a “To:” and a “From:” added, don’t you think? (There’s a job for my Sharpie!) If you wanted to, you could get fancier and paint on some glitter or something.

Voilà! We’re one tiny step closer to being ready for Christmas.

We have our Christmas tree now! We fetched it last Saturday from the bargain store for $10. Although driving up to an Apple Hill tree farm and cutting our own tree is one of my favorite family traditions, we felt this year that being frugal with both our time and money was a fair trade-off.  It’s easier to adapt if your traditions don’t have you in a stranglehold, I think. And being adaptable is important.

Ian’s very handy with a Sawzall. Doesn’t he look handy? Our bargain Douglas Fir tree is fresh and smells wonderful!

We got it all decorated in one afternoon. To me our ornaments are like old friends; I’m glad to see them every year. Lucas was touched by all the “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments that are his. (I regret that we don’t have many of those for Asher.)

I’m surprised at how many Waldorf wool angels we now have to hang on our tree!

Then we played with funny glasses from Captain Jack’s Smiley Bar to see smiley faces on our tree! Thanks T!

And thank goodness for SomaFM’s “Christmas Lounge” station—it’s Christmas music recordings that you mostly haven’t heard before. Happy listening!

We had a modest celebration this morning of Santa Lucia, the Italian saint adopted and beloved by Swedes. Lucia was a young woman who lived in 304 A.D. and gave her dowry to the poor. She was blinded, tortured, and decapitated for it. Saint stories are so grim! For me, well, I’ll skip that part.

It’s said that Lucia appeared to a starving village in Sweden with food and drink for all in need. She has captured the heart of Sweden ever since. (I wish wish wish I had a photo of collage-age Ian as a Star Boy singing to his professors in Upsala, Sweden, in 1993!)

Edit 12/14/2010: I got my wish!!! Ian’s mom came over today and brought some mementos from Sweden, including this photo from 1993. Ian’s in the back row, third from the right.

Last year was a big year for Lucas‘s second-grade class to celebrate Santa Lucia Day, since they were studying saints. They dressed up and walked through the whole school, singing to all the classes and delivering hundreds of Lucia Buns, which I helped to bake. There is a wonderful blog post here, which gives lyrics to the Santa Lucia song.

This year I tried a different recipe (from a Swedish cookbook we bought at Ikea) and made them in the “Christmas cross” shape. Because Ian and I went to a Christmas party last night, I was baking buns at 11:20 p.m. folks. They were yummy and lovely on our breakfast table this morning.

Today Lucas is home sick after being feverish through the night. Maybe we’ll make Star Boy hats for fun.

By the way, we’ve been reading a great book we found at the library called Lucia and the Light, by Phyllis Root and illustrated by Maria Grandpré. It is not the story of Saint Lucia, but is a story of a courageous young girl who must go and rescue the sun from mountain trolls, who have captured it. (Asher isn’t too sure about those trolls.)

Hope you’re finding plenty of ways to bring the light into your homes and hearts this season.

The seasons around here are mellow for the most part; they flow into one another, back and forth—a bit like a river meeting the ocean, where fresh and salt waters intermingle with the tides. So autumn meets winter in Northern California, little by little. They exchange pleasantries and take turns, like friends having a conversation. A biting, cold day kissed by Jack Frost makes way for warm autumn sunshine and shirt-sleeve weather, then we pull on sweaters again.

Our trees are taking their time. Some have already disrobed for their long winter’s sleep, scattering their colorful garments about them and delighting small leaf-pile jumpers and kickers. Some trees are still carrying on in their resplendent finery, like this one in my parents’ yard, into the darkness of winter. Personally, I resolve to admire their colors for as long as they last.

These plum leaves and the elm leaves litter my front yard in great patches of red and yellow. This is where they mingle.

Rainstorms offer opportunities to tromp about in the wetness and mud, to observe the green mosses. The jolly mushrooms are back!

Cloudy skies bring some dramatic sunsets.

Our liquidambar (sweet gum) tree has finally turned orange! In the afternoon sun it is glorious.

Cooler temps bring a new kind of bounty. We’ve watched the neighborhood squirrels steal all the pecans over the last couple of months. I put out some birdseed yesterday to feed the birds; I like it when they visit our yard. They ate all the berries off my dogwood tree, but were far too intuitive and fast to let me catch them on camera.

Today is gray and cloudy, but we might see sun later and a high of 64 degrees. We’re attending Lucas’s school Winter Concert this afternoon. Day by day we march toward the solstice, and we bring a little winter dazzle inside. We coax and conjure winter with our rituals.

My Lucas is inventive. Dashingly, diabolically inventive. He seizes any opportunity to turn an idea into a three-dimensional object. At 8, the name of the game is hands-on.

The arrow is made of a bit of dowel and is sharpened by rubbing the tip on the concrete. The fletching is a feather from one of our chickens. The bowstring is rainbow nylon string from the hardware store. What? You have rainbow string lying about in your junk drawer, too, right?

Lucas’s bow shot the arrow beautifully and quite far.

Lucas also made a quiver, using a handkerchief he had painted during summer camp, a finger-knitted strap he made, and a glue gun.

Later on, when Lucas took his bow and arrow to show Papa, Papa helped him refine the whole thing. The original bow bent too far and it got weaker with time. Together, Papa and Lucas made a new bow with a stouter stick. Papa tipped Lucas’s arrow with a drilled-out lead bullet. Why, you ask? (That’s what I asked.) To make it safer. The arrow was originally so lightweight and straight, it flew too far—far enough to accidentally hurt someone. The blunt lead tip on the arrow ensures that it falls to the earth quicker and won’t pierce … say, a little brother, for example.