skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Quite a few people suffer from what is commonly termed "Post Holiday Sadness." After the excitement, lights, and preparations, afer the visits end and an entire year stretches out before one, along with possibly some regrets or fears associated with the passing year, some people's hearts become heavy.
What to do, what to do? I am a big believer in structure. I advise putting some structure in place immediately. Get up, get tidy, get ready for the day.
Some ideas for structured actions: This is an excellent time to get a few of those large reusable grocery-type shopping bags, and set them up. Now pick a room or a dresser or a closet, and go through your belongings, removing any that you don't want or need. The "Ugly Christmas Sweater" that you bought for the office contest might not have won you the prize, but it might be just the thing someone else wants for next year. The "white elephant" gifts -- ditto. Books you read and enjoyed but not enough to keep - Out they go, to new homes and new adventures.
This, too, is a time to look in your pantry. What did you buy that you didn't get around to making? A food bank would love to have your donation. After the holidays, the donations go down, but the need often rises. Many companies lay off workers right at Christmas (it just happened where I work, too). The boxes of jello and pudding -- they might be used by you in the coming year, but I think they might make a nice treat for someone in the near future, so share if you can! Did you buy too much? Don't browbeat yourself. Just share!
If you can't get yourself going, don't blame yourself about it! That's not being kind to yourself. Please be kind to yourself in 2016. Thank'ee.
Finally, get ready for Twelfth Night. More on that tomorrow, if the power stays on. We are going from weather in the 80's to a winter storm, with up to a foot of snow! Very strange!
Merry Christmas! May your day be one of peace and contentment.
Stop in on the morrow, won't ye, if ye are prone to Post Holiday Sadness. I have a few ideas up my sleeve to combat it.
These are for anyone who might be searching for a simple tag to add to a handmade gift. Sometimes when things are handmade, they take longer than expected. There can be considerable rushing around and often some eyestrain and panic involved.
I hope your Christmas Eve is a happy one. It's my most favorite time of the whole holiday season. We always eat Chinese takeout and just relax. My family is a tiny one, so it's just us three and our rescued pets, who are, to us, also family members. So it will be "catnip for everybody" and at least a solid hour of "throw the ball down the hall" for our dog.
Thank'ee for stopping by.
Some of us are running late, don't ye know. And might need to print something out in a hurry. Christmas has certainly put on its best snowshoes and rushed towards us this year.
Here are some large-format tags featuring real sheetmusic decorated with holiday images.
You could print them out, cut out two, and glue or tape them together on three sides. Then slip the giftcard into the little pouch you've created. Punch a hole in the top and tie with ribbon or raffia so the card doesn't manage to get out.
Thank'ee for visiting and I hope ye enjoy.
I think this would be cute to print out and tie together as a little booklet, then tie to a bunch of straws or tuck into a tall glass.
These are authentic recipes from the early 1960s. I think they date from 1962; I found them among my sister's things and she had carefully typed them out on index cards during her early high school years. I believe she used our old Underwood typewriter. I was surprised to see a recipe containing alcohol included. My favorite from childhood was the Brown Cow. I do love the old names; I wonder if anyone still calls Black Cherry "Whitehouse."
Thank'ee for stopping by, and I hope ye enjoy.
Years ago I had the idea to make coloring books for "adult colorists." The idea wasn't orginal: Dover Publications long had such inexpensive booklets. Theirs were mostly drawn from classical sources. I wanted to make something a little more homey, a little more "country." But, alas, although I made a good start on designing such books, I never finished.
Now it's all the rage. There was an entire table of such books at the bookstore tonight, by new designers. Quite a few young people were picking them up and buying them. Hipsters are undoubtedly sipping some exotic "artisan" brew and quietly coloring in bohemian coffeehouses even as I type this (using colored pencils or crayons with locally sourced pigments and sustainable bamboo casings, no doubt). Actually, it's a sweet thought: People engaged in creating, and maybe getting at least a shadow of the innocent joy that getting a coloring page in elementary school could bring.
To that end, here are some tags you can print out and color. They look nice, if a bit drab, in plain sepia, as well. But it might be relaxing to color a few. I use Prismacolor colored pencils and recommend them. The bargain pencils can bring much frustration to beginning or casual artists, because their pigment load is low and the binder is high, and it makes for a very hard and dull pencil. New artists mistake the failure of the implement to be their failure, when it's nothing of the sort. Good tools, good artists, I say.
As always, thank'ee for stopping by.
Sometimes wee ones become anxious when traveling out of town for Christmas. They think Santa will not be able to find them.
Stuff and nonsense, don't ye know! Santa can find them anywhere. But to settle them down, print this out and cut out the key (both sides). Glue the two sides of the key together and use a glue dot or a piece of tape to place it right there in the goode elf's hands. Trim up the card right and proper and there can be no doubt the key will work perfectly. 'Tis a wee key, m'dears.
While Santa has his real magic key right there with him at all times, this "spare" key can be used in a pinch.
As always, thank'ee for stopping by.
No drama at work yesterday. Or rather, it wasn't my drama. I just work as the Sword of Damocles dangles above my poor olde donkey head.
I'm living on a shoestring this holiday season! And it's a mighty thin string, too! But here is a gift for us thrifty folk: It's a little booklet to print out and cut out and punch a hole in the upper corner and tie together. I ran the instructions alltogether so that you could see how easy it is to make the wee booklet.
Then just wrap up a box of cake mix and tie the little booklet onto the wrapping. Now your friend has a teeny recipe booklet and a cake mix right there, and can start baking. You can add the other ingredients for one of the recipes, too, or even a wooden spoon, if you like.
These "cake mix cookies" are not as wonderful as regular cookies, I don't think. Not quite. But they are much better than store-bought boxed cookies. And they are easy to make. That's half the battle, right there. My better half loves them, which is somewhat insulting, as he doesn't seem to care for my carefully created springerle cookies and the pains I take to keep them white.
I hope this little gift will come in handy for you. One of my favorite novels, The Vicar of Wakefield (a very olde book it is, too, dearies), has a remark in it about the vicar's wife: She is forever contriving all sorts of money-saving ideas and schemes, none of which save much money. I hope that isn't the case, here!
As always, thank'ee for stopping by.
Dearies, it's been a doozy of a week, and it's just Wednesday.
I was written up at work. At my age! After a lifetime of working! I was written up because I was sad because so many had lost their jobs in "our" company. Corporate doubletalk required me to retract and restate that remark. I was reprimanded and told "No jobs were lost. Our company has never laid off a single employee. The jobs no longer exist."
I'm not signing anything stating that I erred in remarking that people lost their jobs and were hurt.
Ah, such drama.
On a happier note, I think this would look sweet on a blog or FB post. I love the old-fashioned look, and wonder who the artist was who could do such fine engraving work.
I was just reading various blogs this past weekend, and one post very much struck me. In it, the author mentioned that life can change "on a pin head." I often muse that life "changes in the blink of an eye," or "life can turn on a dime." And I use those expressions to both warn and comfort.
I needed to read those words again. My life just changed "on a pin head." After a nice company holiday party on Friday where our beloved executives jetted in to help us make merry, at 8 a.m. this morning we got the news that our branch of the company is getting restructured, and some of us won't be moved to the headquarters offices.
Since we are dealing with pins in one of these sayings, I'll add "you could hear a pin drop" -- for a moment. Then you could hear crying. It's not just the job loss. It's that most of us there feel we helped build the company from a small start-up to literally a billion-dollar enterprise, all within a few years. We were told again and again that we part of the "Company Family." Ha! We spent our own effort and money to build respect in the community, we loved and believed in the company, and now, many are no longer part of it. It was a lot to take in.
But -- "Life changes in the blink of an eye." As my neighbor remarked in old New Orleans many decades ago as we watched the flood waters rise and rise and finally start pouring into our homes, "No one is hurt, no one is dead. And we are still on our feet." Wise words. Things and jobs can be replaced. It's our loved ones, two-legged and four-legged and even multi-legged, that matter. Life changed, yes, but, knock on wood, my loved ones are okay.
Here is a little graphic that might look sweet on a blog or FB post.
Thank'ee for dropping by.
Santa is a resourceful olde elf. He travels by land, sea, air and possibly by wormhole. He walks with his little donkey, continues with his horse-drawn sleigh, he straps on snowshoes, he jumps into boats and airships and he even zooms along in a double-decker bus and a train. When he feels especially energetic, he puts on his most comfortable boots and goes walking from house to house. Here is a little set of tags drawn from Victorian images of his many guises and travels.
Please see the upper left column to refresh your memory on how to save images to your own computer or thumb drive.
Tuesday is payday, and I'm counting down the seconds. But remember the line from "Counting My Blessings" in White Christmas: "When my bankroll is gettin' small, I remember when I had none at all!"
Thank'ee for stopping by!
And here we have some tags featuring little Santa drawings from the 1950s.
There are even some that say "From Your Secret Santa," which may come in handy for office gift exchanges.
Simple small tags in red and green. I hope ye enjoy.
See the information in the upper left column if you are unsure how to save the tag sheet onto your own computer or thumb drive. This tag set is saved in jpg format. I usually save in png format, but some people with older computers might have trouble with the png files, so this set is in jpg.
Happy Saturday! We're so close to Christmas now, dearies!
Here are some free printable tags I hope you can use in decorating or gift-giving. They feature little plump crows.
Regular click, click again to enlarge fully, then right-click to save!
Safe travels to you as you prepare for the holidays. And as always, thank'ee for stopping by.
This is an old greeting card of Santa on television. A big bow wraps up the TV and its stately cabinet, and there certainly would have been squeals of delight had a family really received such a present. I recall we were one of the last people on our block to have a color television. And I remember the wonderful feeling that as I watched "Rudolph" and "Frosty" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "The House Without A Christmas Tree" on television, I knew millions more were watching, too. I felt so connected to a world beyond my sad one.
It boggles my mind that so much has changed. I have no idea who most of my neighbors are. Many have never spoken to us, nor I to them. Some of the newer neighbors are mean and threatening. I have no idea as to what they have in their homes or behind their tall privacy fences. And I gave up watching television decades ago. Too decadent, too many channels, just too much. Except now Netflix has brought some interesting series into my life! Certainly I've enjoyed Once, with Rumpelstiltskin also saying "dearie" as I do!
Yes, so much has changed, and not all of it for the better. Much of it; not all of it. Of course! I think I look backwards more in the weeks before Christmas than any other time of year.
But despite the "bad" changes, we live in interesting times.
At work the landscapers have put in pretty "flowering cabbages," whose leaves are as pretty as any summer bloom. I love to see them when I arrive at our tower and when I leave for the day. Snails ate up quite a few, leaving only topknots and bare stems, but many remain. I hope the warm temps coming this weekend don't cause the plants to bolt!
Hope your Thursday is a good one. Christmas is certainly bearing down on us quickly. It will be here in a flash. Today would be my mother's birthday, had she lived. She died far too young a long time ago. She would be 93 this year. It's a bittersweet season.
Let's just say my husband doesn't enjoy most of the trappings of the holiday season, and this year was saying "Bah humbug" to just about everything I delighted in. He scowled at everything I picked up in the store, until I found a "Bah Humbug" banner. That got a grin and a thumbs up. So home it went, and I fixed him a little "Bah Humbug" tree. The black and white puffs and striped ribbon are meant to evoke Humbugs - the British hard candy.
Remember Charlie Brown saying that he wasn't going to let commercialism ruin his Christmas? Well, I've had to fight for my bit of Christmas Spirit, too, my entire life, and I'm enjoying the little "Humbug" tree - despite any sourpusses!
While I think each of us should feel what we feel, and not fake things or alter our true hearts, I also think it's a good idea to open one's heart to fun and wholesomeness, when we can. "Keep the wheat and blow away the chaff."
Keep on keepin' on, dearies.
And here's a little doo-dad for blogs or FB - right-click it and save!
Well dearies, here is another simple set of tags to print and cut out, and a single tag that would be cute posted on Facebook or a blog. These tags feature words like "Brrr" and "Winter Wishes" and I think they look cute tied onto jars, food gifts, and even on trees or swags.
Remember, to save the entire sheet, just regular click, click again to enlarge, then right-click to save.
To save the single tag, just regular click and then right-click.
Thank'ee for dropping by!
I've posted a sheet of smaller tags than my hang tags. These are more business-card sized. I've placed a "scale" photo of the 6-image sheets to give an idea of the bigger tags.
Scale of the bigger tags:
Todlay's tags are more smaller. Nine to a sheet, instead of 6. The little snowman is from a scrap of wrapping paper made in the 1940's, during World War II.
To save, regular click on the image, then click again to get it to full size, then right-click to save.
As always, thank'ee for stopping by!
Some bloggers post Monday through Friday and omit weekend posts. I like to post each day, because I am someone who likes a stricter schedule. It just makes me feel more secure when I can "count" on someone posting, so I try to be that someone. When I was at home and not working, weekends made me very blue. It seemed that everything stopped cold.
So here are some tags to save and print.
Blog years are like dog years: the blogging world moves so quickly. When I first blogged, Blogger couldn't handle huge files like my sheets of tags. I had to "host" them elsewhere. The same with animated GIFs - they had to be hosted elsewhere, and I used Photobucket at that time. Now, I can place my images within a post and visitors can click and save it, and it will print the correct size.
Remember, to save an image appearing within the posts, regular click, regular click again to enlarge it to full size, then right-click to save.
Thank'ee for dropping by.
Sometimes it's nice to have a little finishing touch for those labors of love we do at holiday time, whether it be baking, sewing, primming, beading, or other creative activity.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ry55lsh61wcpg3/tinylabelssheetxmas.png?dl=0
Download this simple tag set free of charge. Once in Dropbox, if you don't have a free account, just click the Download button up on the right of the screen you'll see. Don't worry, the pop-up window asking you to get a free account will then disappear and you can download in peace.
Or you can click the image below and SAVE or PRINT the sheet, depending on your computer and printer set-up. Finally, Blogger lets me upload huge files.
If you click it and the image shows a little magnifying glass with a "+" on it, CLICK AGAIN to make it full-sized, then right-click to save!
Thank'ee for stopping by!
Posts
