Christmas In July

A bit of Patriotic-Christmas-in-July!

Happy day to you all!

As I blog today, it's very hot outside in the Panhandle, but inside the Christmas music is playing, the air conditioner works hard, and I am designing new ornaments.  It's that time again to start creating ornaments for Christmas In July, and for the upcoming holiday season in my etsy shop.  I've got lots of new Sugar Plum Ice Cream Cones in the works.

My little guys love to help out when I get out my ornament supplies.  I've learned to give them a tray of extra items of their own to work with.  If I don't, they are going to be getting into my decoration supplies.  I love that they want to be involved and creating though.  They add their own "boyishness" to their own creations, and we initial and date them, then add them to the tree each season.  Their progress shows in their ornaments as their eye-hand coordination and maturity grows, and our tree has become similar to a special type of scrapbook of ornaments that only comes out during the holidays!

This year I've tried to make ornaments in many different colors.  The green is selling out first, and I'm out of green, so will be making more soon!  Green is a traditional Christmas color, but it doesn't stand out on a tree as well as other colors often do, so selling lots of green this year surprised me, but there is a lot to say about tradition!  I still love to decorate a majority of my home in shades of red and green for the holidays.  My favorite holiday decoration is holly and ivy.....a fine example of traditional holiday colors.

Until next time!
-Rebecca

Home Sweet Home!

I can't believe I haven't blogged since January 1st!  The time has gotten away from me and I promise to do better!  I have thought of it, but getting it done is another story.  It seems like since January, we've packed and unpacked, and caught up on school work, and then repeated the process!  It's been such an adventure....as life really should be, so I can't say I'd do a thing differently!  We homeschool so we can travel. The trick to our adventurous travel is that we're an airline family.  That means "Standby" travel! We can't get anywhere when the flights are full during the holidays.  When the holidays are over, it's packing time though!  Now that the traditional school year is over, we'll be home more, because flights are full of whole families on summer vacation!

We started the year with a trip to Australia.  We loved it.  We flew into Sydney and went up and down the coast.  Everywhere we went took a long time in our little rental car. (No major interstate systems there!)  We worked that car really hard going up and down the mountains and hills of Australia!  It was fantastic scenery though.  Unforgettable.  The kids loved the kangaroos, dingos, wallabies, and all the other things we don't see in the United States!   We spent one late evening watching the small Fairy Penguins leave the sea and go to their nests.  They cooed and called to their mates.  The kids sat in complete quiet to watch them in amazement!  Nature at it's best!

I have many more trips and photographs to add to the blog as I organize again.  It's also time to will start back into the Christmas creating mode for Christmas in July at my etsy shop!  I can't believe half the year is gone.  I say that with many happy memories behind me from this year, and am still looking forward to the rest of what this year has to hold!

I've attached a few photographs of our visit to Australia!  A lovely spot!  Highly recommended!

Happy Summer!

XO,

Rebecca

Olive Trees on an Olive Farm.

Queensland Flooding!  The GPS really wanted us to take that route!

Tourists fed these cuties snacks in a cone, and then the whole cone too!  They seemed to enjoy it!

Fairy Penguins

Bird of Paradise!