New for 2024 -Winter and Christmas Decorating

My winter decorating begins each year with window decorations. I had seen some stars on Instagram made with coffee filters, and I decided to adapt those. I originally thought I could make one large one for each window, but it turned out I would have needed very large pieces of paper (rather than the 12×12 freezer paper I was using since it wouldn’t work for transferring images and I hadn’t opened it until it was too late to return it) because each section needs to be folded in half. So I pivoted and made three for each window.

I had some gnome shape peg people left over from when I made Gregory from Over the Garden Wall, and I thought of turning them into mushroom people for the kitchen garland. And I thought they could peek out of the Scandinavian heart baskets that had been in a sort of a grab bag package I had bought at the Swedish American Museum indoor sidewalk sale. I had always meant to make these baskets, but I had only ever made the quick version I had learned many years ago at the Swedish American Museum table at Midsummerfest. You would never know I didn’t make these, though, because they look like they are made from the same paper I always use. I bought all the packages of gnome pegs they had at Michael’s, so I ordered some from Amazon. They turned out to be bigger, which was perfect for the garland.

Another grab bag package at the Swedish American Museum sidewalk sales included some little cardboard houses and one that looks like a building in Amsterdam. I thought they’d be perfect for the village with train shelf. The vintage cardboard ones are nestled in the snow and the Amsterdam one is between the yellow house and white church from my husband’s mother’s ceramic store that I painted many years ago.

I did put the ladies from Yugoslavia on either side of the similar candle holder on the sideboard.

On the same Brown Elephant trip where I found the Yugoslavian ladies, I also found a sun ornament. Since I think the solstice is what we are really celebrating at this time of year, I always love to find new sun ornaments for our tree.

We found another one on our Thanksgiving trip to Columbia, Missouri. The label on this beautiful ornament says “Silver Tree, designed by Gisela Graham, London” although on the back it says it was made in China.

At our early Christmas celebration, my Brooklyn niece gave me a beautiful patchwork marigold wall hanging to go with my Day of the Dead offrenda wreath, and when I opened the package it was rolled up with this little sun around it. I promptly added it to the tree.

We went to the Krampus Fest again this year  and there were a lot of Krampus ornaments to choose from. I forgot to ask the artist of the one we chose his name, but I did ask him how he made it, and he said it was constructed of layers of 3D printed plastic

He looks a lot like this Krampus who was at the festival. He seems to have put the child he grabbed in his sack already.

I also added some ornaments to my children’s book and movie characters tree.  Children’s Museum Liz gave me a felted “grape ape” from The Teddy Garden that reminded me of the gorilla from Goodnight Gorilla, so I gave him a set of keys and hung him on my tree.

I’ve been wanting to make Elephant and Piggie ornaments for years, and this year, I finally did!

I also got an Emmet Otter figurine. Last year, to commemorate our trip to see the Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas play, I thought I was buying the whole jugband, but it turned out I had only bought Charlie Beaver.  So this year I bought Emmet Otter.