caroling

christmas music by the muppets is on heavy, heavy rotation in our home as we gear up for the big day. ruth's favorite? "the christmas queen" with miss piggie. royalty is mentioned- and ruth loves royalty- but miss piggie also says the forbidden "shut up" and ruthie, who loves being naughty, gets giddy each time she hears it (and then whispers it to herself about five times to see how it tastes). topping eve's charts (literally. charts. lists. visual aides of any kind. she's all about them):  "zat you, santa claus?"  by dr. teeth and the electric mayhem band. perfect for swaying hips through the house while snapping- her latest achievement.

as awesome as the muppets are, chip and i sourced the more traditional carols for our christmas decorating. a far cry from the simplicity and ease of last year, but we're now almost certain we love it just as much. and eve can sound out "wondrous" so, win win. chip, once again, deserves the high five with this decorating scheme. he concocted the plan, brought home the paper and didn't complain once when i stopped cutting after three lines.

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four more days. amazing. and to start our celebratory week off in the most perfect way, a big snow storm came through town last night. with church cancelled we spent the day with friends, watching the girls make snow angels in the freezing wind, visiting the life of christ exhibit at the brooklyn museum, returning home to drink deliciously rich hot chocolate, listen to heavenly angels (and muppets) sing our favorite songs of the season while the snow melted off our boots. a pretty decent start to what will undoubtedly be one of the greatest and jouyfully busiest weeks of the year. merry christmas everyone!

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-added- how we do it: cut out letters- freehand in all different sizes make it especially charming, i think. get long strands of bakers twine (any thin string will do, i just have an absurd amount of bakers twine). using scotch tape, tape the letters to the string, folding each piece of tape from the front of letter, over the string and to the back of the letter. secure string of words to walls. done.

tea time

i woke up from the haze of adjusting back to new york time to find myself in the wednesday before thanksgiving. feasts, decorations, turkey dances at school, frenzied but fun food preparation at home filled the day. then thursday came. more preparation, a subway ride to the west side to catch the last 20 minutes of the parade (perfect- when we first arrived there was a marching band completely obscured by the 1/2-block-deep crowd ahead of us, no giant balloons in sight.. but there were plenty of street vendors selling very average sized balloons all around us. ruthie, on my shoulders; "ooooh! there sure are a lot of balloons! look at that princess balloon! oh i love these balloon parades, mom, i love it!" then the pilsbury doughboy poked his head around the dakota and blew her mind. then, just minutes later, to a wildly cheering crowd santa-- the REAL santa-- showed himself. eve; "the REAL santa came to visit us just to make us thankful?! he came early? so totally awesome."), return home, grab the food, grab the kids and, cleverly avoiding most traffic, arrive in the suburbs to spend a dreamy day in a house full of friends and insanely delicious food. i love thanksgiving.

the few next days brought sleepovers with family, our third round of fairly severe colds for the season, december, and me sitting and sniffling and behind on everything. but through the haze of jetlag and head cold i am so very happy to be home and so very happy to give my thailand report as soon as i can gather myself and my photos. 

until that magical day, i'll share some photos that the talented photographer, kelsey foster, took of the girls back in october. the moment kelsey contacted me about possibly setting up a shoot with the girls in some of the clothes i've designed for them, i was giddy. her photos are lovely and she is just the right amount of sweet and easy going. watching her patience with the girls - who were ridiculous that morning - was entertaining and endearing. also, the fact that i'm pretty sure she saved charlie from getting trampled by waiters at least three times makes me especially fond of her. 

kelsey chose the roebling tea room for the shoot. a great choice. the food was fresh (which made charlie happy), the light was beautiful (which made the girls happy- sunshine!) and the place was virtually empty until the moment we began to make our way out (which made me happy. especially in the moment when charlie was yelling and writhing in my arms, ruth was writhing on the floor because i took a drink of her juice and eve was running along the bench at full speed). 

kelsey, thank you again! meeting you was wonderful and the pictures are beautiful and so fun. 

all images property of kelsey foster. all clothing designs property of katie did.