Have yourself a quiet and peaceful advent time

I love advent.  I might love it more than Christmas - it has to do with anticipation and all those little rituals and traditions that come with the advent time.  advent wreath, Barbara blossoms, cookies, quiet hours with music and books, advent calendars, Christmas markets, festive lighting and decoration - I love it all.

But advent is so early this year!  I forgot to get a wreath.  Or rather, I thought about it all week long but the wreaths I saw I didn't like, decided I would do one myself, forgot to get greens...  and all of a sudden, it was today.

I remember that in Romania and in Armenia, it seemed the most important thing to me to have everything very traditional.  I'm a bit more relaxed these days.  Old age makes wise?  Who knows.  I saw an idea in a magazine lately where they made an advent "wreath" with canning jars, evergreens and little number tags.  I stole the idea but I didn't have four same jars, so I took four different jars, made those number tags out of simple paper, used the butcher's twill they used but ran out and used golden wire instead.  I also didn't have evergreens, so I filled my tray with walnuts and left-over greens and berries from the bouquet my Mom gave me, and some little fake mushrooms from a wreath from years ago.  Voila, our advent wreath of 2011:

 

Oh, and do you remember our old fall tree from a year ago?   I was ready to throw it out (it's only been there because we forgot to take it down when we moved away.)  The kids were horrified.  Throw out the tree?  But, but, it's a tree!!  You don't go and kill trees! 

I'm not cruel, and I'm a reasonable adult, so I compromised.  We removed the "fall" leaves and put up those little paper stars we made also a year ago.  The kids love it.  "We have stars on our tree!" I admit it looks cute.

On this note, have a nice first Advent Sunday.

Comments

[Amy]

Beautiful creations!