Dorothy B. Oven Park

Last night, we went to Dorothy B. Oven Park to look at the Christmas lights.

Christmas 2018

Scenes from our December:


This is the picture we sent out with Christmas cards this year:


The Lego robot kit that Blaze received for his birthday on Dec. 6th:



Thomasville, Georgia's Victorian Christmas Festival:





The new tree topper I made to display the color-changing Santa's airship ornament from Hallmark:



A snowflake cake at Solstice:



Visiting the lights at Oven Park:


The gingerbread train:





Melted snowman bark:


Stocking stuffers:









The Hogwarts Express Lego kit that Blaze got for Christmas:



The cat somehow got into and out of that spot on the windowsill without knocking anything down.



Playing the Clue game that Blaze got for Christmas.

Steampunk "I Spy" Christmas Letters

I bought these puffy letter on clearance after Christmas several years ago, but only just got around to doing anything with them. I've acquired quite a few steampunk charms and buttons over the years and this project made use of all of them and then some.




I spray painted over everything with "Hammered Copper" colored paint.

The New Steampunk Christmas Wreath

My new wreath is made out of Dollar Tree finds and things I already had around the house.

I started with a wreath that was purchased from Dollar Tree last year. It looked kind of flat at first, but fluffed up nicely.



Fluffed before painting:



I sprayed mine with Old Copper spray paint.



Mixed metallic colors were added by tying pieces of dollar store tinsel to the bases of some of the branches. This also adds additional fullness to the wreath.



The mixed colored bells have been used as vase filler in past years, to support a pillar candle, but since I have a different candle display idea for this year, they are now part of this project.

I made 5 sets of wired bells, with 3 bells in each set.



This bright red train was purchased at the post-Christmas sales last year and received a coat of shiny black paint before being added to the wreath.



A blue-striped airship ornament was painted gold to balance out the other side of the wreath.

The bells and ribbon were wired to the wreath, everything else was attached with E6000 glue.

I Hope Everyone Had a Wonderful Christmas!

We had a very nice, relaxing holiday.

I did no cooking at all today, but instead put out a table full of snacks this morning, that people could graze on whenever they wanted. 

We unwrapped presents and then spent the rest of the day enjoying our gifts and started catching up on episodes of Dr. Who that we'd missed.





We finished our day by taking a walk around the neighborhood to look at the full moon. It was foggy, but the moon still shown through in that hazy way that they like to show in old horror movies. It was 80 degrees during the day and still very warm tonight. Blaze wore the headlamp he got in his Christmas stocking and discovered that if he set it on the red light setting, he could look at toads in the grass without scaring them away. 

This Year's Christmas Crackers

Firstly, my new batch of cheesy jokes:



I found these chocolates in the specialty foods section of Marshall's for $3.99.



The paper crowns are all the same this year and are made out of printed tissue paper that I purchased last year at World Market.



The prizes inside the crackers are from the dollar store and a clearance display at Party City.





This wrapping paper was meant to be.
Somehow, after wrapping presents, I had exactly the amount of wrapping paper leftover to wrap these three Christmas crackers.

Thomasville, Georgia Victorian Christmas

I've been so busy with Blaze's school work and Christmas prep, that I didn't get these pictures posted last week.

December 11, we drove up to Thomasville for their Victorian Christmas Festival.





The world's biggest rocking horse: