Christmas at work...

The VNA really goes all out for Christmas. Wednesday was Mingle Day - all the employees bring in their special dishes and spend the day traveling around the different departments eating. There's a chinese grab bag or secret santa and carollers and a raffle. It really is a lot of fun and celebration after a year of hard work.

I won this meat thermometer in the raffle - I think the only one in my department to win?

But the managers gave us these....they were so pretty, little pieces of art and presents all in one. They were waiting on our desks when we returned after lunch.

Christmas Cookies and Baby Geo Balls

Today, and tomorrow, will be spent making cookies for my mother's employees. We're planning lots of different varieties from bars to cookies to popcorn to candied orange peels. Not your average cookie platter in our house...

Sometimes I wish we were more traditional. I love traditional. But, it's also nice to try something new, plus people appreciate it more when they don't receive three plates of stale store-bought madelines. Most of the people my mother works with come up with pretty creative presents. One year, we got a cocoa sampler. Another, homemade honey. My favorite were the pizzelles. They just reminded me of the lacy snowflakes in my earlier post...I wonder if that's why I enjoy them so much?

Anyways, the rest of the weekend will be spent making a geo-ball for the grandson of close family friends.

I included a picture of two balls I made for twins born to other close family friends. That's what gave us the idea. I am also going to try to make them an ornament for the baby. They just sent Owen one, which is especially poignant because shortly after my family moved to Connecticut, even before I was born, they sent Christmas ornaments. Every year, a small package would come that held three ceramic ornaments, usually children from pastoral scenes - a boy and two girls.

Even as we lost touch through the years, as life got busier and more complicated, the ornaments kept arriving. Little reminders of two of the kindest people I have ever known. I got to know them as an adult very recently at the christening of my newphew after we got back in touch with them when my sister got married. The last time I had seen them before that day, I was only seven years old or so.

Now, it's our turn. So that is why I am going to try to make an ornament for them. Maybe a little bird? For some reason I never think a Christmas tree is complete without a little bird perched on the bough. But that's another post...

Deck the desks...

We decorated for Christmas at work today. Instead of using the crinkled, bent decorationspacked in boxes from last year, I decided to make paper snowflakes and hang them like garland from the ceiling tiles.

There is something beautiful in simplicity; crisp, white lacy snowflakes are subtle. They glide, like from the sky itself, and when you look up at them, their whiteness catches the light, it doesn't reflect the light, but rather they make you feel blanketed in the warm snow. I know, you don't think snow is warm, but I do.

When it snows, the clouds seem to insulate the earth, the air is warmer, and as long as the wind isn't whipping, everything is peaceful.

I wish I had extra strands of white twinkle lights - those twisted around the paper snowflake garlands would have made it 100 times better.