favorite christmas ornaments

Merry Christmas! I wanted to share a few of my favorite Christmas ornaments. Christmas ornaments are a big tradition in my family. When my mom moved out of her parents' house, she didn't have very many of her own ornaments for her first Christmas tree. My dad came into their marriage with two ornaments. My mom has always made sure my sister and I have plenty of ornaments for our own trees. I have so many, they don't all fit on my tree anymore. 

When we were little, my mom kept track of each ornament we received- who it was from, when we got it, and what box it should go in. I'm not so organized anymore...it's all I can do to get the lid back on the ornament box!  Here are some of my favorites:


This is one of my favorites. It's a glass mirrored pear, and I got it around the time I was born. It's one of the nicest ornaments I have- it's real glass, and pretty hefty. It's always belonged on the top of the tree with the other "nice" ornaments, so the dogs/children/presents don't break it.


This is a little plastic angel I got in pre-school. She's plastic, but can't you just hear her singing?


Christmas at the Zoo ornaments- I have about 20 of these. It started with one little ornament, a pair of penguins painted in teals and whites in 1987. My mom bought one at the Indianapolis Zoo for our family tree. The next year they had another animal ornament, the next year another, and so on and so forth. I now have about twenty of these ornaments- dolphins, whales, leopards, tigers, lions, walruses, seals, giraffes, elephants, and all the other animals from the ark. These brass ornaments take up about half my tree- so much that my mom stopped buying them for us so we'd have room for something else!!


A new favorite- Winnie and Bristow. I didn't have Nellie yet when I took this pic; I need to work on that one for this year!

you'd better watch out

Why you don't leave ornaments out in the same house as my dogs.

as seen at michaels

dreaming in moon lake

"dream" in Chinese, pronounced "meng"

I took this off a pillar surrounding Moon Lake, which is a large lake in the very middle of Ningbo, China. I don't get to sight see much, if at all, on my work trips in China, but this was too close to our hotel to pass by.  We walked all around the lake- it turned out to be a very warm day- before heading off to Shanghai.


The rest of the pillar. I have no idea what it says!

craftiness spotted in shanghai

I could have stayed in the Shanghai market area all day. It's mostly a tourist trap, but there is some fun stuff to be had.  We found one booth where they wrote your name in Chinese characters, but this one was so much better than the other dozen in the market. They made the kanji into colorful animals, fish, trees and whatnot.





We each took turns getting our name done. This booth also had fantastic paper cutouts- you can see Obama in the picture below.



They cut them out of one piece of paper- so unbelievable to see them do it.  I bought a pack of ten bird cutouts in red tissue. I am going to frame them for my house, along with my name in Chinese!!

nihao...a month late

I just got my photos from China uploaded onto Flickr. I've had them uploaded on my work computer since I got back (mid-November), but I have no Flickr/Blogger access from there. I had to wait until I got my super-ghetto card reader (aka my old camera, since my mac doesn't recognize my new camera) hooked up.

I went to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and mainland China for work. 


Shanghai, the main market area at night. In the rain. It took us about 2 hours to get home since no cabs were available.


Moon Lake in Ningbo.


Me again at Moon Lake in Ningbo, about 3 hours from Shanghai.


Hong Kong


The pedestrian street in TST in Hong Kong


View from our hotel on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong


My kickin' balcony at our Hong Kong hotel

going to class- jewelry making class

My mom is retired now, so she has a bit more time on her hands nowadays. She treated me to a jewerly making class at a local (to me) crafty place.  We used Art Clay's precious metal silver clay to make some jewelry pieces.  You get a block of silver clay about the size of the lego, and the studio provided all of the tools to finish it.



After seeing a short demo, I gathered my tools- brass pattern plate, utility knife, spacers, some stamps and buttons to make a pattern on the clay. I already had in mind what I wanted to do- a small initial pendant, like you'd see on Etsy.



I ended up making three small initial pendants and one larger pendant with all the clay I had. We only had about 10g and it dries quickly, so I had to move move move to make these. The pendant with the lowercase J got kind of wonky b/c it started drying out and I had to start over. To make these, I took a small ornament shaped cookie cutter and lined it up with a small initial stamp- the kind you'd use in scrapbooking. Stamp, stamp, cut and I was done!  I didn't get too elaborate with my designs because we didn't have a ton of time.



Here is the silver clay drying on a regular old kitchen hotplate. Mom tried to make a free-er form piece. I could tell she wasn't really into the class as soon as the instructor said "let's make something organic," but she gave it the old college try anyway. Her piece is the one with the straw through the bail, which is the part that broke.



After drying on the hotplate, the silver clay is in a "greenware" state. It's still very malleable and can still be shaped, fixed, etc.



After being fired in the studio's kiln for about 15 minutes, the pendants come out white. I took a wire brush to polish them, then tumbled them in stainless steel shot for another 15 minutes. Tada! Instant jewelry.

The Art Clay/PMC silver clay products are kind of expensive- about $16-20 for a 10g brick. I made three small and one medium pendants out of that, with a bit of scrap. But to actually make these (admittedly basic) pieces, it was pretty darn easy. I'll definitely give this another shot.

Oh, and I wore the L piece to work yesterday and everyone totally thought I got it online!