Last night was our family Christmas since Sam, Lynnette, and Lindley will head to Ft. Worth to spend Christmas with the Ogles. We all met at our house for food and presents, in the usual Davidson fashion (a total train wreck).
The food was good, mainly because Molly cooked it all. The only blips were the grapefruit cake, which everyone was too full to eat anyway (something about the egg whites not whipping up as desired) and the corn pudding (which refused to cook on time and was left in the oven during the present-giving-chaos and was promptly forgotten until some of the party-goers had left and somebody went to check on it, finding it had finally cooked to the well-done stage). We feasted on meatballs, Paula Dean chicken/mushroom pockets, Sista Schu rolls, mashed (or creamed, depending on your heritage) potatoes, various Christmas-oriented junk foods, ravioli, and possibly some other stuff, stuffed being the operative word.
Once our Disney fleeces (we all had fleeces with our names and Disney characters embroidered on them, and no, I did not embroider them, and no, of course we did not get a family picture of all of us with them on) were stretched by our ever-widening girth, we headed to the living room for gift-ripping. Since the living room couch was still undelivered and somewhere in Lazy-Boy Land, we all sat on the floor or dragged a chair into the room. And the presents began flying about.
I got many wonderful things, some of which are Disney pics, plaque, and even a Mickey/Minnie kissing salt/pepper shaker, along with new gloves, a pink hand-held blender, and a new eensie-weensie pink camera. It was all very nice and very much appreciated.
But now, for my make-its. The first two, which were for Lynnette and Mathieu (the in-laws, poor things), are so pathetic that they don't even deserve pictures. Basically I put their names on their presents - an art bin for Lynnette and a portfolio for Mathieu. Hopefully the gift cards that were attached to each made up for it.
The first thing that got finished was Steve's - a wagon for hauling around Lindley and Everley:
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| The "make-it" part? Name and seat covers. I take the "make-it" part rather liberally. |
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| Everley taking the first ride - Lindley was on her way west. |
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| Everley is a multi-tasker, as long as she has a driver |
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The next present that got finished was for Sam, Maribeth, and Molly (things go much quicker when you give the same thing to several people). Unfortunately, I needed some help with this one, as the photos that I took were terrible. Luckily, I have a professional photographer in the family, so Mathieu obliged at the last moment to bail me out. The make-it part was when I went online to Walgreens and created the print (my make-it gets even more broadly interpreted at times). Oh, and I bought the frame and framed them, too.
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| The doors in clockwise order starting with the red door are: Ours, Sam/Lynnette's, Molly's, and Maribeth/Mathieu's. |
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The next gift to get finished was Everley's ABC book, which was basically a scrapbook where two pages each were dedicated to a letter represented by pictures of Everley (for the most part). Needless, to say, some pages had more pictures than others (there just aren't a lot of words that begin with "X").
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| Okay, so you get the picture. Scrapbooking may not exactly be my talent, either, but I certainly have a beautiful subject!! |
The last gift to get finished (that would have been Friday morning) was Lindley's, which was to be a fort because (a) Lindley likes forts (created by draping a quilt over whatever will hold it up in the coat closet), and (b) a few months ago, Lynnette said that she would like a canopy for Lindley's room (the kind that looks like a little circus tent-thingy). So, I decided to combine the two for this occasion. Early on, I decided to use a hula-hoop for the round part and an old Disney king-sized sheet for the main part. I had some remnants from other projects that I decided to use for the other parts and bought some trim a few days ago to finish it off. So I started. And then my sewing machine decided to have a hissy fit and break the thread every few inches. While I am sure this had to do with tension (mainly mine) or bobbins or something like that (note: I think of sewing as hot-glueing things together with thread), I was still getting pretty frantic about this project getting finished. It didn't help that I had sawed the hula-hoop in one place with the intention of threading it into the pocket I had made in the sheet, but after draining the hoop (who knew that hula-hoops contained water), it refused to hold its original shape, despite my best duct-tape efforts.
At this point, I knew I needed help, so I prayed that it would all work out, and it did. I bought new bobbins, and the sewing machine got over itself and sewed smoothly with no breakage. During the night, I remembered (or rather God reminded me) that there was a small piece of PVC pipe in the ground in the planter (marking a sprinkler), and I thought that maybe it would hold the hoop together, and it did, creating the roundness that was needed. Pretty soon, I had a fort!
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| Okay, so the picture is terrible, so use your imagination. Or come play in the fort with Lindley! And no, this picture was not taken with my new pink eensie-weensie camera!! |
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And so there you have it - Davidson Christmas and Make-its 2012 is in the books. Whew!!
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The Good Stuff From Today: unpacking boxes; AT&T store with Molly and Andi and switching phones; Factory dinner take-out with Mathieu and Molly; Everley time
It's been quite a year. Personally for me, it's been about family and friends. It's been about travel and races and cruises. It's been full of blessings every single day.
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