Camp Creek Press

Geninne has part 2 of the rubber stamp carving tutorial up! It's an early holiday present for all of us -- enjoy!

Many Christmases ago, I bought this lovely album (made by Chronicle) and started recording Christmas things in it.

Now, I'm not a scrap-booker. Or a scrapper. Or whatever the correct term is. I do put my photos into albums with photo corners, but then I just scrawl captions underneath and call it a day.

We do, however, doo-dad up this album quite a bit with stickers, rubber stamps, etc. The holidays are all about going over the top, right?

The best thing about this album is, no one sees it but us, so there's no pressure to make anything look particularly good. It is a great place to keep track of special memories that would otherwise be forgotten (like the year Jack, age two, took the entire day to open his gifts, finally finishing just before bed).

It is the place to stuff the Christmas card list, the notes to Santa, copies of each year's Christmas card, etc.

We write down our Christmas Eve menu, whether we threw a party and who came, the weather on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and funny things that happened.

We put in some pictures, usually funny, leftover ones that we cut up. They are more representative of our real holidays.

We keep track of our favorite gift wrap and tags from different years, and if I manage to make anything crafty I keep a sample. (These tags were made by xeroxing old family photographs, cutting & gluing — easy peasy.)

I used to always keep copies of my Christmas card list and mark who sent me cards in return. I now have better things to do (thankfully), but it's fun to look back at the list from 10 years ago. We also keep track of where our new ornaments come from (who gave them to us, or where we bought them on vacation).

For a very low-key holiday project that can be done any old time, I highly recommend one of these albums. We have some skipped years (with blank pages left, optimistically, in case someone has time to go back and fill in — Jack's birth blacked out a year, as did a move), but in the end, it doesn't matter. Whatever we manage to save, we enjoy looking at next year and beyond.

This is just one of those simple things that really becomes meaningful. (I pretty much only do simple things — are you sensing a trend?) Another thing we did (and I would love to share it with you, if I could find it) (I'm sure it's in one of the dozen boxes of decorations): I bought a simple little blank book and every year when we set out cookies and milk for Santa, we wrote him a little note. At first we wrote the note, then our first son started writing them himself, then his little brother ... and sometimes Santa writes a quick note back! (One year the page was all wrinkled — Santa had gotten snow on it!)

So, the album will go under the tree, with the wrapping supplies, and the boys will take charge of writing in it and gluing in it this year. A simple project, but one of our favorites.

This is my 41st (!!) post this month, so really, just like in high school, I am a consummate overachiever.

I was sure this would be a good exercise for me, forcing me to clear out the idea closet and freshen things up, and indeed I feel it did just that. I am now in the habit of posting more regularly, rather than waiting and waiting until I have said things "perfectly" (or at least better), and I think that's a very good thing.

The requirement to sit down and post every day has made me focus more on all my ongoing projects, and other non-blog-related things have moved forward a lot more, just because I've sat at my desk every day with a must-do attitude. Also a good thing.

Cheers to my bloggy friends who NaBloPoMo'ed along with me; I love it when you post every day, because I love reading your blogs! And cheers & more cheers to my readers and commenters; you guys are the best. I can't believe how many great people I have met through this medium. I have read so many new blogs this month, exchanged entertaining e-mails, received such nice comments. Sniff. I'm a little verklempt.

If you are reading this, thank you!

And make sure to subscribe to Yvonne's blog or add her as a friend on Flickr, because when the cold, gray dreariness of late January hits you, nothing will cheer you up faster than Yvonne's pictures.

I've had such a great response to the last two days of book posts that I decided we'd have more book talk today! (It doesn't take much convincing to get me to talk about books. Anyone want a cup of hot chocolate?)

I have a few less familiar (I hope) holiday books to share with you. Of course, I love The Polar Express. We read it every Christmas Eve. I love love love it. But everybody's heard of it. Maybe some of these will be new to you.

We love this beautifully illustrated book of Robert Frost's poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, illustrated by Susan Jeffers. The dust jacket is vellum, with the cover gorgeously illustrated in a way that is simply uncommon today. This isn't a terribly long poem, but we read it very slowly, to enjoy looking at each picture. This book makes a lovely hostess gift; it can be enjoyed by adults and children alike.

Another book with a vellum dust jacket (co-inky-dink) is Abbie Zabar's A Perfectly Irregular Christmas Tree. It's unfortunately out of print, but that won't stop me from bringing it up. It tells the story of a tree chosen for Rockefeller Center, and we love her illustrations.

(Abbie's book The Potted Herb makes a great gift or stocking stuffer for a gardener, and it's still in print.) Country Living magazine did a layout on Abbie's house and Christmas decorations a gazillion years ago and I've never forgotten it. In fact, I still have the issue! If I can find it (ha), I will share.

Back when the boys were small, some dear friends gave us Stranger in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy. The title sounds a bit ominous, but it is really a sweet story illustrated with gorgeous photographs of snowy woods and woodland creatures. The boys loved it.

Is everyone in love with Toot & Puddle, or is it just me? We don't even have all of their books; the boys are a little too old to snuggle down with one these days. I love I'll Be Home for Christmas.

Oh, okay, one more mention of a pure classic before I go. No, not Snowy Day, although, hey, that's another good one! I'm giving a shout out to Katy and the Big Snow. I love all of Virginia Lee Burton's books, I think. What a great bundle to give a favorite little — Mike Mulligan, The Little House, and Katy and the Big Snow! (Is The Little House out of print?!) And just to round things up by getting back to the obscure, have you ever seen her book Life Story? No, it's not her autobiography — it's an amazing picture book telling the story of evolution.

Time to put the winter- and holiday-themed books in the basket by the wood stove, dig out the flannel lap quilts, and wait for the first snow.

Okay, you aren't going to believe this, but once again I managed to piddle away the day and forget to take my photographs before the sun slipped away.

It was a beautiful day, too! Warm, and we continued trying to winterize the Airstream so it won't bust a pipe over our cold midwestern winter.

Thank you everyone for your book recommendations re: yesterday's post! We have an absolutely enormous home library, partially due to the fact that we are out-of-control biblioholics and partially due to the fact that when we closed the TPS we brought home a good section of the school library.

Today, in lieu of the post that may never be if I can't get it together and take a picture before nightfall, I thought I'd continue the bookish theme and list some of our all-time favorite read-alouds.

Of course, these books are just as enjoyable read to oneself, but you know, there is just a perfect read-aloud book. Mm, what are the criteria. The chapters must be long enough that one or two make a good evening's read. Not too much cliff-hanging action at the end of the chapters, causing undue agony to small ones writhing in their beds begging to read "just one more!" (Mommy needs her sleep.) I like a read-aloud that sparks some good conversations. And, I suppose, the most important thing to me is that it be written beautifully, so that reading it aloud is a pleasure in itself.

Anyway, here are some of our top favorites. We've read all of these two or more times, no more frequently than once a year.

The Little House books. I've read all the way through the series three times. The first time I read them, Jack was so small (two, maybe?) that I didn't think he was really getting it, although he always lay quietly in the crook of my arm. Then one morning he told me he'd had a dream. I said, oh really, what was it? He said, "I dreamt Pa made eggs for me and Mary and Laura!" So I guess he was getting it, after all! Their top favorite of these books was Farmer Boy. I think my top fave is Little House in the Big Woods. The descriptions of the harvesting, butchering, and putting up stores for the winter! Farmer Boy is also a paean to everything gastronomical. My advice: don't read this if you're on a diet.

A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you're a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to go or come. You'll be free and independent, son, on a farm.

Mother was frying doughnuts. The place was full of their hot, brown smell, and the wheaty smell of new bread, the spicy smell of cakes, and the syrupy smell of pies.

One of my favorites from my own childhood: Rabbit Hill. How I loved this when I was a child. I must have read it every year since I was five. The boys love it, too.

The houses were all asleep, even the Dogs of the Fat-Man-at-the-Crossroads were quiet, but the Little Animals were up and about. They met the Gray Fox returning from a night up Weston way. He looked footsore and sleepy, and a few chicken feathers still clung to his ruff. The Red Buck trotted daintily across the Black Road to wish them good luck and good morning, but Father, for once, had no time for long social conversation. This was business, and no Rabbit in the county knew his business any better than Father — few as well.

Another favorite from my own childhood (in fact, I read them my childhood copy) is Rascal. We have probably read this aloud at least once a year the last three or four years. They absolutely love this book.

My harmless skunks had further complicated matters on a recent Sunday evening. These pleasant pets that I had dug from a hole the previous spring were now more than a year old and somewhat restless. They were handsome, glossy creatures — one broad-stripe, one narrow-stripe, one short-stripe, and one black beauty with a single star of white on his head. All four had perfect manners. Having never been frightened or abused, they had never scented up the neighborhood.
~~~But one night in June when Wowser must have been drowsing, a stray dog came barking and snarling at them through the woven wire, and they reacted predictably. Sunday services were progressing at the church not seventy feet from their cage. It was a warm evening, and the windows of the choir loft were open. For the first time in his life Reverend Hooton shortened his sermon.

I'm afraid they're perhaps (sob) getting a little too old for Winnie-the-Pooh, but we own the big treasury that has all the books and poems in one volume, and I have read it all the way through, front to back, several times. This book, by the way, would make a great baby gift.

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.

Already mentioned yesterday, but worth mentioning again, we've read aloud and loved (more childhood favorites of mine) A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door. The rest of the L'Engle books they've read themselves, but these two we have read aloud several times.

"You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?"
~~~"Yes." Mrs. Whatsit said. "You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you."

This year we read aloud for the first time Treasure Island, and both boys absolutely loved it. I hadn't read it myself since I was a child and I had forgotten how exciting it was. A few weeks after we read it aloud, Dominic sat down and read it again to himself.

He was plainly blind, for he tapped before him with a stick, and wore a great green shade over his eyes and nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge old tattered sea cloak with a hood, that made him appear positively deformed. I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure.

Even though the boys are now 8 and 11, I still read aloud to them every night. They have been reading on their own for years, but they still love to be read to, and I love to read aloud to them. They also love to take their turns reading aloud. Sometimes meals (at which everyone is allowed to read, always — they were aghast to find out this wasn't allowed when I was growing up!) turn into a free-for-all with everyone trying to entertain everyone else with selections from their book.

I don't know what the secret is to growing great readers, but reading aloud can't hurt.