Well, while I work on trying to improve the look of the blog (see previous post), I will continue to write because really, can I ever not share my thoughts on whatever pops into my head? I wish my laptop was alot nicer because there would probably be quite a few more postings if I could post whenever something was in my head. I guess that's what my Twitter and FB are for! (You poor suckers that follow me on there)
As usual, I have a bunch of projects I'm still chugging away on. They'll get done sometime this month but now that it's December and Thanksgiving has passed, it's time to break out the holiday decorations. I will rush to put up these decorations as soon as possible after Thanksgiving, not because I can't wait to celebrate our weird Hanukkah/Christmas mix but because, darnit if I'm going to put in a lot of effort hanging lights and garland and putting the fall decorations away while dragging winter decorations out of the basement, I want to enjoy them for as long as possible! I refuse to put them up before Thanksgiving and I will not keep them up through January. Well, maybe just the snowmen stuff. And so, this week I will spend almost every night frustratingly swearing on my front porch (PG-rated swearing, since I have neighbor kids). The weather was absolutely lovely on Sunday, I didn't even have a coat on, so I started the lights then. I checked the strands to make sure they worked and after hanging lights for an hour or so (making great progress I thought), I ran out of staples. But I figured I'd plug in what I had completed, take a look at it. Several sections would not light up. So I gave up for the night, knowing I had a lot of time ahead of me just to fix the ones I already hung. Last night, I return to the little glittery bastards, ready to remove bulbs and plug in new ones in an assembly line type fashion only to discover that some of my strands miraculously relit themselves. Not that I wasn't happy, but what the hell?! And of course it was much colder so by the time I finished hanging a few more strands, I had had it for the evening. Tonight will be take 3 (at least for the front porch). Needless to say, I probably won't complete much on my other projects.
Speaking of my other art stuff, I am thinking of entering my first craft festival next year since Irwin has so many festivals and does not charge for you to be a vendor. However, that means there will be a lot of work for me to accomplish over winter if I want to have enough merchandise available. Otherwise, my display will look pretty pathetic. Sometime soon I will need to sit down and plan it out to see if I can accomplish it at all. As for bookbinding, that will be somewhat difficult since I usually do custom jobs. I have some new wire-working tools for jewelry that I am really excited about. I probably won't get to use it until mid-December once all the holiday gifts are bought and wrapped and decorations up.
Decorations are tricky (see how my mind bounces around?). Hubby and I are both Jewish but 75% of our family is not and so we tend to just celebrate both with different sets of families depending on the day. My family is not Jewish (I converted 4 years ago) and so I was raised on tales of Santa and twinkling Christmas trees (not in a religious way, however). When hubby and I started our own decorations, I tended to only get things that are winter themed. Snowmen, snow flakes, animals, etc. I didn't want to overdo it so that our house looked like David puked his star everywhere, but I definitely wanted to avoid anything Christmasy. Well, that didn't last long. We broke down and bought a "holiday" tree. All of the decorations are cool colors like silver, blue, purple, gold and themed around animals and winter. I am very strict on the No Santa rule. But it recently occurred to us while chatting with another relative that we may have to rethink ALL of our rules. When we eventually have children, we do plan on having them attend Jewish services, go to Hebrew school, etc. BUT we don't want to raise them strictly Jewish. We plan on teaching them about all sorts of religions so that as they get older, they can choose whatever they want, if any. Now, that complicates things because if we celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas, I can't really avoid Santa. He's pretty essential actually, if you are a young child. I'm already feeling confused so I can't imagine how a 3 yr old would feel. I'm still not going to buy a giant inflatable Santa for the front yard though.
