Thankful Sunday, December 20, 2020

 I am thankful for playful cats.

I have two elderly cats--littermates who are over 17 years old. They are definitely showing their age and spend most of their days sleeping with occasional howling for us to sit down so they can sleep in our laps.  We occasionally get them new toys which they promptly ignore. However, they surprised us this week and showed a bit of themselves from their younger days. 

Annie was enjoying her morning snooze in a sunbeam as usual.

However, the next minute she was on a stand playing with the peppermints which she dumped out.  Cats do not like peppermint, so that was a surprise. But a fun one to see her take an interest in more than sleeping.

Later that day, she helped Theo with his laundry. Annie has always loved laundry, especially dirty laundry, but she hasn't "helped" us with it for a long time--until today. 

The next day, Annie was taking her morning snooze in the another sunbeam. 

But a little later she was trying to look innocent as she hovered around another basket with peppermints.

And soon she had them all on the floor.

Right where she wanted them for a little fun.

Later, she found a new place to hang out under the Christmas tree. Over the years, we have had various cats who have enjoyed sleeping under the Christmas tree, but not Annie -- until this year. 

Not to be outdone, her brother Leo has been a bit mischievous recently, also (but I don't have any pictures). One morning, he left his sunbeam and was batting around garland. Soon thereafter, we were surprised to see him on the counter eating turnip leaves. He can barely do stairs, so we're not sure how he made it up onto the counter. 

These small examples of kitty play have been very fun for us to watch.  We consider it part of the magic of Christmas and for that we are thankful.

Boxes and such

The walk to Ward's shop has been slippery since the snow
and ice storm we had last Wednesday.

 

Ward has been interested in woodworking for years, but had spent more time reading about it than doing it. That is until recently. Teleworking has added extra hours to his day which has given him more time to spend in his shop. Much of that has been spent setting things up, but recently, he has been able to actually make some things. Most of these are Christmas gifts and I'm going to show you a few of them. As in most many things, I think they are prettier in person than they are in the pictures.

This is a pencil box made from poplar he recycled from a pallet.

This is a dresser top box made from maple and sapele.
The sepele is a fun because depending on the light,
 it forms different patterns.

This is a puzzle box made of oak. There are four different slides
that have to be done before you can get inside.

Inside the puzzle box, he is hiding M&Ms and a gift card.
Now that's fancy, but perhaps cruel, wrapping. 

These are drop spot trays--one for each son.

This is a wooden puzzle that he is making for his co-workers.

Can you tell that Ward likes puzzles?
He's good at all kinds of them.

Note: Few if any people from our families read this blog, so I'm safe in revealing things before Christmas.

Simple Crafting

 or How to Overthink a Craft

The finished product.

A couple of months ago, I heard about a children's memory game made out of wood that I thought I might want to try. The game set was made of round disks cut from a branch and then stamped with pictures to form a matching game. It seemed just about my skill level, especially if I could get help from Ward. I thought I would make a couple of sets for gifts and maybe one for the library.

And then my mind kicked into high gear thinking about the actual construction. First consideration was safety. The pieces needed to be larger than choke size and be made of a non-toxic wood and finish. Luckily Ward knew a lot about finishes, but we still spent a fair amount of time shopping for what we thought would be best. Next, I considered using natural cut wood from a branch, but worried that as it dried over time, it would crack. So we went with a 2" pine dowel. We experimented with thicknesses--thick enough to not break and easy for little fingers to pick up. But not too thick. Then came the hard part--getting pictures on the pieces. I tried stamping, markers, stenciling, ink transfers, painting, stickers along with gluing, decoupaging, and various finishes.

 However, even with all of those methods, I was not happy for various reasons including look, durability, water resistance, etc. In the middle of the experiment, we changed from a pine to a hardwood dowel because the wood grain pattern of the pine competed too much with the pictures. 

A few of the prototypes

Finally, I came upon a workable solution. I used clear address labels which I printed letters onto and then put on the finished disk.  That was covered with another coat of finish. But, of course, it wasn't quite that simple. The hardwood (poplar) didn't finish well, so we switched back to the pine.

Then it was onto making a bag to hold the pieces. What should have been a simple, straight seam project turned into hours of frustration with the sewing machine which was having all kinds of adjustment problems. I was able to get something workable, but the machine needs some serious attention before I use it again. 

The finalized pieces.

So despite all of that, when it's all said and done, I'm happy. It was nice working on a project with Ward and I think the children I'm giving these to can have fun (and learn) from them. It should have been so easy, however that would have been only if I hadn't thought so much about it. Oh, well. Onto the next project.

Until next time when I'll show you some things Ward's been working on.

Note: Fitting in perfectly with the theme of aggravation, Blogger is frustrating me with its formatting and spacing. I gave up on those for today so the post may look a little strange.

Animal crackers

 

Although our tree has been decorated for a couple of weeks now, I put the final touches on it today when I added four boxes of animal crackers. We will have them as treats on Christmas morning. It's much harder than it used to be to find animal crackers in boxes with a handle but Ward eventually found some yesterday.

Below is a previous post that talks about the first time I made the animal cracker-Christmas correlation. And I'm glad I did. 

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Animal Crackers for Christmas

or Now that makes sense.

I ran into a friend the other day while shopping. She was buying Barnum Animal Crackers and I was trying NOT to buy some Doritos. She told me that every year at Christmas, she buys a box of animal crackers for her kids since the crackers originally started as Christmas ornaments. Wow. I had never heard that. I guess that explains the string on the box.

Very curious, I went home (with a bag of Doritos) to see if this story were a piece of lore or truth. Here's what I found out. Animal crackers have a long history starting in England before the colonies were formed. After importing them for several years, they were eventually  produced here. There were various companies involved that eventually merged together to form the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco). In 1902 they started to call them Barnum's Animals from Barnum and Bailey's Circus. That was the same year they had the idea of marketing them at Christmas with a colorful box and string to hang on a Christmas tree. I'm not sure how long the this campaign kept up, but the box, largely unchanged, with it's string is still around over 100 years later.

Guess what Santa is going to bring Ward, Wally, and Theodore for Christmas this year? It will be hanging on the tree waiting for them Christmas morning. A new tradition has begun.

Want to read more?

http://collectibles.about.com/od/advertisingstuff/a/blTFbarnums.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cracker

http://www.foodreference.com/html/artanimalcrack.html

Carolers

Saturday night we were visited by a group of delightful carolers. They were a group of elementary school girls who were all members of GAC--Girls Animal Club. The girls explained that they formed this club because they all love animals and hope to get a pet one day. As part of their mission, they were collecting money for an animal charity if you wanted to donate. They all wore masks, socially distanced, and were very polite. After the group finished singing, they handed us a holiday card they had made. The littlest one (6 or 7) then mentioned that the next-door neighbor had given them all ring pops, but the older ones quickly quieted her.  We didn't have any treats for them, but did donate to their cause. 

Their visit made the evening for Ward and me and many others in the neighborhood. There are some parents out there who are doing something right and we feel lucky to be living among them.

See you tomorrow.

Note: I don't have pictures of the carolers in our neighborhood, so I've linked above to other singing kids that I also enjoyed .