Each Year is a Gift

Apparently, 2009 was a difficult year. I know this, because I've heard it said on the news so many times, I've read it in Christmas newsletters, and even Dear Abby said she was "sure all of us are glad to bid a 'fond farewell' to 2009."

I feel like I missed something.

I didn't find 2009 any better or worse than any other year. Each year is a package deal. You get good and bad events. Some months--weeks--even days may be better than others. Some may be worse. But that is what living is all about. What would we be without the ups and downs of life?

I think of the people in Wall-E. They had everything they could possibly want at their fingertips. They wanted a drink, they pressed a button. They wanted to change their outfits, they pressed a button. No need to worry themselves with waiting. No need even for human interaction to reach their goals. Were they better off for it? All they did was sit there staring at a computer screen (and yes, I recognize the irony of what I am saying) and atrophy. They were alive, but lifeless.

If your only loss this year was material, you did well. We were barely keeping ahead of the bills some months, and one of our cars breathed its last. Luckily, my husband doesn't work very far from home. He's been taking the bus, and I've been dropping him off or picking him up when I can. It is always nice to have no worry about money, but unrealistic. We've always tried to live frugally. In good years, it is easy to get used to material comforts, but it is good to remember that we can do without them, if necessary.

My heart goes out to my friends and family dealing with illness, and those who lost parents, spouses, children, relatives, or friends. Since the beginning of the year, I've been to three funerals. That didn't even represent all of my grieving. But saying goodbye, as hard as it is, is part of the journey of life. The lives that touch us are fleeting. I cherish the moments I have with each family member and friend. We do not know how long we have to spend with each person, so enjoy the time you have with the ones you love. Help them when you can. Listen to them. Everyone appreciates being heard.

This year, I was also blessed with friends and family who brought new life into this world. I'm sure none of them would think of 2009 as a bad year. I believe some of the most beautiful babies were born this year.

So as the ball drops this year, do not bemoan 2009. It wasn't a good year or a bad year. It was one more year of life. If you are loved at the end of this year, I think you are doing pretty well.

And if no one else tells you so, know that I love all of you who have taken the time to stop by and read my little blog. If I have brought one smile to your face over the course of this year, that means more to me than anything I could possess.

Peace and Laughter,
Cristina

Home Spun comic strip #429

Wishing all of my readers a safe and happy beginning to a bright new year!

Continuing Crafting Christmas

Some more of the presents Marina and I crafted this year. I had a baby sketching theme going this year. These pictures were sketched for two of my cousins. I've been asked how long it takes me to do a sketch. These are almost the size I sketched (slightly smaller). I have trouble determining that because half of my sketching time is shutting the sketchbook and walking away in frustration when a drawing isn't going the way I want it to. I spend a lot of time on little things once I get the overall sketch. So I might spend a half hour just trying to get the shape of an eye correct, or fiddling with the shading on the nose. I made the mistake in the sketch below of starting the pattern on the shirt. Once you start working on a shirt pattern, it becomes a slippery slope into madness.

This second picture was tricky. I couldn't find a picture I liked of the two children together (the perpetual parents' dilemma), so I did the sketching equivalent of photoshopping, starting with the baby in front and then sketching her brother in slightly behind her. It was the eve of Christmas eve when I was working on this picture, so I opted to leave out more than hint of their clothing, especially since most of Adrian's shirt was hidden by his daddy's arm. When I finished, I told my husband to take the sketch from me. He didn't listen, so I spent another half hour alternately penciling and then dabbing with the eraser, trying to get the boy nose and eyes to my liking. Looking at it now, I would still like to do more, but the gift has been given. (Maybe if I visit them, I could bring along my sketching tools...)



Marina was hard pressed to finish her knitted gifts. I already told her that it was OK if mine became a birthday/Christmas/Mother's Day gift, but still she was knitting her fingers off trying to finish gifts for her brother and sister. For Sierra, she made a two piece dress for the American Girl doll. She was working from a pattern, but had to make some fitting alterations. She lengthened the skirt and added the flare. On the top, she added the button strip in the back. The top can be worn in either direction, with buttons to the front or back.

I didn't even know she was making the dragon for Chase. She managed to do that very secretly.



Add in all the baking and chocolate dipping we did, I guess we were pretty productive this year. No wonder I wore myself down and ended up sick. There is something to be said for doing Christmas crafts earlier so that you don't get overwhelmed as the day draws near. I think I'll make a resolution to start my crafts earlier for the new year.

Maybe January.

The Castle and the Angel

One of the gifts I gave my mother this year was a visit to Lyndhurst. My father, Marina and Sierra went along. I was bit worried because you needed to make reservations to tour the mansion, and it had snowed significantly Saturday night. Luckily, we weren't hit too hard. My parents, 25 minutes south of us, had to dig their car out of 12 inches of snow plus whatever slush the plows pushed against it. I'm glad they were able to go. It's a beautiful, castle-like Gothic mansion along the Hudson River. For the holidays, all of the rooms were decorated in fairy tale themes and costumed storytellers related the stories that inspired each room. No pictures were allowed inside, but they did get some nice ones outside and in the entrance hall...

The day ended with a beautiful sunset over the Hudson.



On Christmas eve, the children in our parish perform the Christmas pageant. Chase is too old for it now, so he did some volunteer work, helping the little ones to remember their cues during rehearsal. This was Sierra's first year, so she was one of the angels. Here she is getting ready to leave our house...

and then in the midst of the other little angels...

I always get choked up at the pageant. Especially when they bring out the baby. This year's Jesus had a lot of hair on his head and babbled along with the songs. So cute! At one point his crown popped off and one of the older angels (Gabriel I think) picked it up to put it back on the baby's head. It was a very beautiful pageant. After mass, Chase got this beautiful picture of his little sister...

Gingerzilla!!!

For the next few days I will post photos of our Christmas crafts and activities with the hope that you won't notice the lack of comics. Today, I present this year's gingerbread creation.

For those of you unfamiliar with our family, I will explain that our children look at freshly rolled gingerbread dough the way Calvin--of Calvin and Hobbes--looks at new fallen snow. The possibilities are endless and usually unique. Please refer to Gingerbread Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Temple of Marshmallow and the Gingerbread Castle.

This year's model idea started with Sierra finding a dinosaur cookie cutter. Marina kidded about Godzilla attacking the gingerbread city. You never kid about these things. Soon I was cutting out buildings for the cityscape in the background. Sierra insisted on a volcano. I thought it was a little far-fetched to have a volcano so close to the city, especially after Pompeii, but if you are going to have a giant dinosaur gingerbread menacing the good ginger-citizens I don't think you can argue against a volcano.

Here we have Gingerzilla chasing the gingerbread men in front of the volcano. I'm not quite sure why Cinnamonsaurus is there. I'm pretty sure he's an herbivore.

Run, gingerbread men, run! As fast as you can!



Whoops. Looks like one of them got caught by a fallen candy cane column. Guess we'll have to eat him.

Home Spun comic strip #428

Merry Christmas Everyone!

My Christmas wish for all my friends and family is for a day so filled with joy and laughter it carries you through all of next year!

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Home Spun comic strip #426

Murphy's Law of Christmas cards: You always receive cards from people you didn't send a card to. And they are most likely to arrive on December 24th.

Crafting Christmas

We seem to be doing a lot lately. Comics are delayed again. My apologies! Christmas seems to get closer every year. I do have some work to share with you of presents we have already sent out.

I made this sketch for a friend of her baby. I'm planning a similar project for a couple of other people.

I also did a sketch of some cats for a friend. Getting patterns correct can be maddening. I'm a perfectionist about making pets look like the pets. I used some colored pencils on this one too (thanks, Vicki!) to try to make it as close to the coloring of the cats as possible.

Marina has been in a knitting frenzy. I've seen some of her work that I can't share yet (the gifts are being given on Christmas) but these are a couple of things she's made.

This fairy doll has removable clothing and even little knitted undies! Very huggable. It's about 18 inches tall. I love her. I'm tempted to have Marina make one for me, but she's in the middle of a birthday/Christmas/Mother's Day gift for me.



She also made this sparkly vampire as a joke gift birthday present for a friend who doesn't like Twilight. He has a removable cape and wears a sweater and slacks. I think he was 6 inches high, but I'll have to check with her to see if that's right. She made up the pattern herself and was particularly proud of how the hair came out.

Angel Christmas Card

Here is the second card. I was playing with the coloring in my photo studio, so it has much more color than the cards I sent out.

This one has deeper, more personal meaning for me. It is always harder for me to draw what is in my heart, because my heart doesn't think like my head. It is more impulsive and intuitive. Sometimes I feel this disconnect from my hand when I draw this way and I surprise myself with what comes out. I don't know if that makes sense. It's hard to explain. Anyway, I hope you like it.

Home Spun comic strip #425

Post #1000: A Christmas Card for you

I just realized that this is my one thousandth post! I am amazed! And I feel so unprepared because I am full tilt into my Christmas preparations as well as the general middle-of-the-month busy-ness, so I don't even have a comic strip to post. Never fear! I did at least get the majority of my cards in the mail, so I will post the ecards here for my online friends. I will post one today and one on Friday, that way if I still don't get my act together, I have something to put up.

Of course, crazy artist that I am, I hand colored the cards I sent out. Marina helps me with that, which is nice. I used to send out over one hundred cards, but now the list has whittled down to around fifty. I want to thank the computer and the internet for making my card sending a little easier. I scan my designs onto the computer to do finishing touches and to print. This year I also let the computer do my lettering, which saves a lot of time and frustration, especially since my pen usually decides to drip an ink blob at the final word. My husband also saves me time by printing out address labels for me. I haven't enough patience to learn this label-printing skill, and it helps him feel like he's part of the process.

Checking through the addresses this year was difficult. We suffered several losses over the past year. I find myself hesitating over the delete button. It's hard to watch another name disappear from my address book. It feels like I'm deleting a part of myself. Maybe it's just me.




Feel free to use this card. I will make it public on my Flickr account, where the original version is somewhat bigger.

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I will hope that this one needs no explanation. Thank goodness for digital cameras. Thirty pictures later and I have something decent to show this year.

So tell me, how did your family holiday photo come out?

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True story: I thought it would be a great idea for us to paint pottery at one of those craft shops one year. I figured some of it would make nice gifts for Christmas. In particular, I wanted something unique for Sierra's godmother. I found a clay plate that I painted a simple angel onto. Just a circle head with halo and a triangle body. Then we would have Sierra (then 1 or 2 years) put hand prints on either side for wings. What kid doesn't like sticking their hands in paint?

Apparently, my kid doesn't.

After the screaming fit we decided to leave and go to a restaurant nearby, hoping she would calm down before the shop closed. After she ate, we returned to the pottery shop. The best we managed were two fist prints. And this from the child who would eventually decorate my wall when she was five (I dug the picture out of my archives for your amusement)...

Home Spun comic strip #422

Carnival of Homeschooling at HSBA Post

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling: The Christmas Ornament edition is up at HSBA Post. Please stop by and check out some of this week's posts by fellow homeschoolers.

Home Spun strip #421

Kicks, Chocolate, and a Vegetarian

Wow, this has been one eventful weekend! Chase had his two hour black belt exam on my birthday evening. It felt like he had to show every kick, punch and poomse he knows. He also had to demonstrate his sparring and grappling skills, which is not my favorite part of this. I was a little worried as he was matched against adults twice (both of them higher black belts). He did hold his own and even did an impressive throw of one of them, but that doesn't detract from the instinctive mother bear feelings. I tried not to look too much.

The parts I did like were his demonstration of his poomse and his board breaking skill. We have a video of these parts. Unfortunately, we didn't have a good angle of him breaking two boards with one kick. Here it is:



We also went to a Chocolate World Expo in our area on Sunday. That was really neat. Marina and I came away with a lot of ideas for this season's chocolate making. We found some interesting confections, including maple sugar cotton candy (candy floss), a white chocolate made with coconut milk and raw sugar, giving it a honey color, and some interesting chocolate covered pretzels that were the most colorful I've ever seen. There was a Beatles tribute band called O-bla-di Bla-da that played so well we didn't sample half as much chocolate as I thought we would. We were enjoying the music. I may not be able to talk in the morning from singing along. Plus the girls worked off anything they did eat because Sierra pulled Marina up to dance with her for half of the show. I am very happy I can share my love of music with my kids. There was also an a cappella group performing, unfortunately their sound suffered from two of the members having colds. Hard to reach those high notes when you are getting over congestion. They also had some problems with their mikes. It's too bad, because the songs that didn't rely on the tenors were very good. This was a nice finish to a birthday weekend that had a shakey start. I'm glad we decided to do it.

In other news, Sierra's shift into vegetarian life has been pretty smooth. For those who have asked, she's been talking about becoming a vegetarian for months now. The tipping point came when she happened to catch some scenes while I was watching Food, Inc. on YouTube. She loves animals and the idea of them being treated poorly for food was enough for her to decide to be vegetarian now. I mean...NOW. She is as determined as her 'Buelo when she makes up her mind about something. I've already discussed nutrition with two vegetarian friends and another friend who is studying to be a nutritionist. Luckily, Sierra is not opposed to eating dairy products and vegetable protein products, so we are doing fine. In fact, the whole family may start eating healthier because of her. Who knew a child led education would lead here?

Home Spun Vignette #9

It is a blessing that Thanksgiving weekend was so peaceful, because we have been very, very busy this week. Chase has been making some final preparations for his second-degree black belt exam this evening, which included a paper on the history of tae kwon do, several extra classes and a last minute photo session of the poomse he made up, followed by several hours of me fiddling with computer programs to help him put it all together and print it out. And two last minute trips to buy ink cartridges for the printer (the first trip resulted in the wrong cartridge.) All I can say is that homeschooling does not make one immune to the phrase "Oh, and I need it by tomorrow." At least I got a nice thank you card from my son for the help. My husband's car went in for repairs on Tuesday and to coin a phrase, "It's dead, Jim." Our poor little 17 year old Camry is now about as useful as a paperweight. We are back to being a one car family. Oh well, I don't suppose it would be difficult to chauffeur one more person around when he needs me to, and on the bright side, hubby will get a little exercise sprinting for buses. In the midst of all this activity, Sierra has turned vegetarian, which involved a extra long grocery store trip as I tried to figure out what to feed her. Long story. I can't make this stuff up. Oh yeah, and...today's my birthday.

At some point, I'm hoping to start preparing for Christmas. I'm thinking I should have some free time by the end of the month. Good thing we celebrate Little Christmas!

Home Spun Vignette #8

Marina is in a knitting frenzy right now. She started some of her Christmas projects a few months ago. She could probably go faster if the cats didn't think she had the coziest lap when she knits!

Carnival of Homeschooling at Atlanta Homeschooling Examiner

I feel like a slacker since I haven't contributed to the Carnival of Homeschooling in a while. Of course, I haven't been a slacker because my busy life through November is what made me keep forgetting to post something! This week, I managed to remember and be in front of the computer at the same time!

The 205th Carnival of Homeschooling: Those Crazy Homeschoolers is up at The Atlanta Homeschooling Examiner. Please take a moment to read some of the latest articles from homeschooling bloggers.