Box of Memories

I haven't had our Christmas tree up for over three years and I was really anxious to see all of my old Christmas decorations. Noah was coming over for the evening which was a perfect excuse to put up the tree and decorate.

I spent the morning in the crawl space dragging out Christmas boxes. I didn't remember having so much stuff. RocketMan helped and also let me know that we had too much stuff. He set all the boxes in the living room while I started to put the Christmas tree together. It's artificial and I couldn't believe how long it took to set it up and spread out all the branches. I added the lights next and then waited for Noah to help with decorating. I was exhausted by this time.

I had accidentally brought up an unmarked box which contained ornaments that I had made and put away for my kids. These were made years ago when I was doing a lot of craft shows and magazine projects. Near the end of that era, I decided to put away some of my designs for each of my kids. I wish I would have thought to do it earlier.

The photo above is a snowflake face that I made one year for craft shows. I always had repeat buyers so every year I had all new polymer clay designs. I had customers that bought for their grandkids, teachers and themselves. I got to know quite a few of them from seeing them year after year.

My favorite magazine was Crafts. I still miss it. This Santa project was in a special issue called "Santa and Friends."


This is Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.

This is a simple Christmas train set I did for a magazine.

This was one of Carol's (Duvall of HGTV The Carol Duvall Show) all time favorite
designs of mine. I got so much email about it and it was a project that came to me in the middle of the night like a dream. It is one of my favorite too.

I loved to buy existing ornaments and adding polymer clay to them. This was a drum ornament and I added the drummer to the top of it.

Both of my kids played for White Bear teams and the team colors are orange and black.

I wish I had taken pictures to remember all the different designs I had created during my craft show days but that was in the day before digital cameras and I didn't take the time. I had forgotten so much of what I had done during those hectic craft show days. I only did Fall shows but I was busy most of the year preparing for them.

Tomorrow Rocketman has his cataract surgery. He's really looking forward to it since he's been unable to see out of that eye since the retina detachment. I hope this is the last of the excitement for a while. We both could use a break.