Christmas - All that's left is the memories!

Today was a picture-perfect winter day--blue sky, warm(ish) sun, temps up into the 30s.  It was a winter day like we never had last year until April!  I hear we need some snow though.  People are having trouble with their septic lines freezing up because the ground is so frozen so deep.  Always something!

 Here is the lake as it looks today.  On Sunday as we drove to Duluth, the lake was frozen solid out as far as we could see.  The windy conditions today have caused wave action that has broken up the ice out just beyond the pier.  Warm(er) temps, but cold winds.  It was a cold walk out on the pier!

And this is the channel looking to the southwest.  The angle of the sun on the refrozen ice made it sparkle like diamonds.

And here's a close-up of the ice.  And, no, people aren't allowed to try to get to the ice caves yet.  The camera shows ice in some of the protected bays near the caves, but warm days like this will slow down the big freeze needed to access them safely.

So, back to Christmas.  We undecorated the tree on Monday--always a bittersweet deal for me.  I'm sorry to put everything away but also kind of like the uncluttered, clean look that is left behind.  Besides, we need room for the jigsaw puzzle table!  Rather than try to move the very dry tree out the door to the deck, we used our giant Fiskars to cut off the branches while the tree was still in the house and in the stand.  Much neater!

But, as promised :-) here are some more of our decorations and their stories.

This manger scene has been in my family since way before I was born.  Little has changed with it as long as I can remember except for the ears, legs and tails of the animals have had to have repairs through the years, especially my younger years.

I always like to arrange the pieces of the fence around the whole scene.

The animals are so cute.  Can't blame a little kid for touching them, can you?

See the camel?  He's had the most repairs through the years, but he's still standing!

The peppermint candy in the middle came from a smocking class I took about 30 years ago in Redwood Falls with Jeanne K. back when I lived in the little parsonage on the prairie.   I think I branched out from little ornaments to smocking dresses for my little girls.  Fun!

 This little angel was given to me, and made, by my Sunday School teacher, Hazel Peterson, before I had was even started school.  

 This was a  Mom and Dad Christmas gift made back when I was in first grade.  It's a scene cut out from a Christmas card and glued onto a canning lid.  (My mother kept everything!)

This is a Leann creation of a piece of driftwood carved into a Santa Claus!

This was from my crocheting year, about 1982, I think.  It's crocheted, then I blew up a balloon inside of the crocheting, and then dipped it in a heavy solution of sugar water to make it stiff.   And it's still here all these years later.

And then there was my tatting year.  The hardest part of tatting is learning to "flip it" to get the tatting knot on the right thread.  I think I may have used starch to stiffen this one.  Not as sticky as sugar!

And, finally, my quilling year, actually I was quilling for a few years back then.  Quilling, if you're not familiar, is done by twirling thin strips of paper using a "quilling tool" to make designs large and small.  I couldn't create anything of my own but give me a pattern to follow, and I'm your girl!

So, here's to Christmas, 2014!  We were happy to share it with both daughters and their SOs for a few days.  We ventured into the making of lutefisk again with relative success, but how can one really measure lutefisk success.  I liked it and it brought back all the good memories, so I say it was good!  Thanks for sharing our Christmas with us!