O Christmas Tree

I'm running a bit late this year on my holiday blogs. Actually, I pretty much just scrapped every thought I had in that direction about three weeks ago.

I put up my tree just after Thanksgiving, like a good girl. I had everything ready and did the Advent with the kids just like I planned. However, my Soldier wasn't home, so a lot of the day to day stuff got chucked out in favor of surviving long enough as a good mother until he walked off the plane.

My usual white/silver/clear tree decorations changed a bit this year. In the past several years, I have had a themed decoration on the tree. You can see previous years' trees here and here. For my theme this year, I made some assemble-yourself gingerbread people. They added a splash of color as well as a child-friendly element of unbreakable-ness.

The gingerbread people will be recycled next year as gift tags, because I'm crafty and earth-responsible that way.

The new mingled with the old. We still have some of the first ornaments we ever bought back when we were newly married. Some are looking a little worse for wear, but they all come together nicely. Most of them are glass or at least very delicate and I hold my breath every year for the tragic possibilities of irreparable destruction.

Many of or shaped or special ornaments are symbols of Christmas.

Santa brings us a new ornament every year. This year, straying from the traditional symbol, he commemorated our first Christmas as an Army Family.

We are slowly collecting nativities. We've been fortunate thus far that only one set is horribly breakable. The other two sets can be handled by the kids with little worry of broken glass or porcelain. 

At the top of the Christmas Advent House, Santa watches the whole scene.

I do have pictures of Christmas morning. Those will be coming soon.

I hope you had a wonderful, warm and safe Christmas surrounded by those you love.

Merry Christmas!

Flash Mob

Just about everyone I know has some idea of what a "flash mob" is... I've even known some people who have participated in one. For those of you who don't, a flash mob is when a group of people in a public setting will pretend not to know each other and will slowly, one by one, start singing a song as if they are in a musical. (Only in musicals do people spontaneously sing together and know all the words in spite of seemingly making it all up on the fly.)

I've seen a few good ones. I've seen a few not so good ones...

Mostly, I love the surrealism of spontaneous song in a place where it doesn't seem to fit.

A friend of mine posted the link to a flash mob that was performed at a wedding.

It gave me chills. It made me tear up.

Though I have never seen Le Miserables on the stage, I grew up with the music in the house because my parents had seen it and loved it. I'm looking forward to the movie coming out later this month.

So, really, more than anything, this is for my Mom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ziBJOi7cDY&feature=share

Enjoy.

30 of 30: 10 Things Remembered

Finally finished the last one... the real question now is: What should I blog about? :)

If you haven't been following along from the beginning, click here.

List 10 things you would hope to be remembered for.

In no particular order...

1. I want to be remembered for my writing. I believe I have some good stories to tell and I would hope those stories will stand the test of time.

2. I want to be remembered for being a loving and wise Mother. I want my children to one day look back and see that all I wanted was for them to grow up happy and well-equipped to deal with this life.

3. I also want to be remembered for being a faithful and supportive wife. Even if it's just my husband who remembers me for that, that would be enough for me. :)

4. I want to be remembered as someone who lived their beliefs. It's one thing to say what you believe in and quite another to actually do it.

5. I want to be remembered as having love for everyone. I try my best to accept everyone around me because I would like the same done for me.

6. K, so this one is kinda shallow, but I want to be remembered for being the best hostess, EVER. I want people to talk about my parties for YEARS! :) (Of course, I need to acquire my own abode first in order to accomplish this.)

7. I want to be remembered for my humor. That means that I have to meet some people who actually GET my sense of humor...

8. I'd like to be remembered for my wisdom. I'm not there yet, but I am gathering it up little by little. I figure I'll be considered wise in about ten thousand years.

9. I'd like to be remembered for being courageous. Again, this is something i'm still acquiring. But, eventually, I'd like to be capable of bravery no matter what the circumstances.

10. I'd like to be remembered for being a good cook. I'm a passable cook now, but I'd really like to learn to be a really great cook!

So that's it. The end. It took me a lot longer than I originally thought it would, but finishing feels GREAT! Why not do a 30 Things yourself? Your friends and family will learn a lot about you and, in the end, so will you. :)

29 of 30: Misunderstand

If you haven't been following along from the beginning, click here.

What do you think people misunderstand most about you?

I think this is a funny question because I could very easily misunderstand what people misunderstand about me. :)

However, these are my impressions.

I think people are under the impression that they need to protect me from difficulty because I can't handle it. Over the years, I've had people tell me that they didn't want to put me into situations that would be too "hard" for me.

Before I tell you the way that makes me feel, let me tell you why I think they do this.

I think they believe I am a sensitive soul who wears her emotions on her sleeve. This part is very true. I am sensitive and I am an emotional person. But that does not make me weak in any sense of the word. In fact, I think some of the strongest people are often those who are well-connected to their emotions.
I do cry easily. That doesn't make me weak either. It can be embarrassing sometimes, but it's part of who I am and I do my best to control it when necessary. You don't have to have a dry face to be strong.

When I was still working, I was told that I was denied extra responsibilities (that would have been good for my career) because they thought I would get my feelings hurt. I was too sensitive. At the time I was shocked. I was the best in my department in this particular skill and the responsibility was given to someone else because she was "tough."

On the flip side, I've seen others who think they have to be tough, loud or mean in order to be "strong." I think that just makes them look weaker. Confidence isn't loud. Strength isn't aggressive. The attributes that I want to incorporate into myself don't shout or hurt other people's feelings. I believe you can be confident and humble, strong and gentle. True strength emanates from a person and speaks for itself.

Now, let me tell you how it makes me feel.

I think it's insulting. When someone tries to "protect" me from something difficult, they're basically confessing their lack of faith in me. In my mind, they are telling me that not only do they believe I can't do it, but that I'll never be able to do it... ever. If you never give me a chance, how can I become more and better than I am? I am well aware that I certainly have my own way of doing things, but that does not mean I CAN'T do it. I find that I do best when I know those around me have confidence that I am capable. I don't NEED the people around me to cheer me on, but I'll be honest, everyone could use a little cheering on.

I've learned more about how strong and capable I am in the last two months than in the last five years. I've also learned where my weaknesses lie, but that doesn't stop me. I'm a work in progress, just like everyone else.

Let's all just have a little more faith in each other. We can all benefit from that kind of give and take.

Pin Fail

Okay, so I'm a Pin-whore. I admit it. I love Pinterest and I must pin all the things. Well, not really. Just a lot of things. Okay, everything except for the things I think are ugly or too lame to pin.

On that note...

I pin tested this:

http://pinterest.com/pin/140948663308364396/

"For the Christmas tree- Glue 2 of these, back to back and insert a silver metallic cord for hanging. Fill the insides of the tree with these after putting on the lights, but before putting on the ornaments. The sparkle will be tripled."

Tripled, you say?! Sign me up!!

So, about two weeks, or so, ago, I went to the craft store to look for mini mirrors. I was actually looking for round ones, but I would have been satisfied with whatever they had.

As it turns out, all the other crafty mormons must have seen the pin too because the selection of mini mirrors was pitifully small. I also found that the square ones tended to get chipped, cracked or completely broken into finger-slicing shards of pain. For a bag of about 20 square ones, it cost $2.50.

That's not too bad, you say? Well, considering that in order to do this pin properly, you have to glue these mirrors back to back with a little loop of twine in between so that you can hang it up. So, each bag would only make 10 of these little darlings. If I had wanted the round ones (which were more asthetically pleasing and not so much broken) they only had bags with mixed sizes which didn't appeal to me at all.

Well, I mulled it over for about 10 minutes while my children started whining about going to the fabric section.... really, I have no idea why they like it so much.

Finally, I noticed that they had some round, flat and mostly reflective silver sequins right in the same area. I could get a bag of about 250 of those for the same price as 20 mirrors! I reasoned with myself that they certainly wouldn't reflect as much as a tiny mirror, but I could buy a lot more of them for the same price and that would make up for it!

Right?

So, I bought those.

About a week ago, I set out to glue those babies together, but first I had to cut all those little lengths of string.  250 divided by 2 equals... uhhh... 175. Yay, I'll cut 175 little lengths of shiny silver string. Wee! Before you say anything at all about that, yes, it wasn't until I ran completely out of sequins that I started to realize that there might have been something wrong with my math.

So, the half hour that it took me to cut the string.. didn't think about it. The next hour and a half to two hours that it took me to glue them all together... didn't think about it. It wasn't until I ended up with a pile of string and no sequins that I thought there might be something wrong.

However, I didn't immediately assume that it was my bummer math skills. I thought that maybe I didn't find all the ones that had fallen on the floor when I tried to make piles of the slippery devils and they squirted straight out of my fingers and all over the desk and floor. So, I searched the floor for what would have been 100 sequins if my math had been completely correct to begin with.

Yeah. I have sad math skills... especially when I'm excited about a project, I guess.

Anyway.

So, I had to wait almost a week before I put up the tree. I have pictures for you. There is a slight difference in the light in the room from the before and after, but in the end, I don't think it makes a difference.



Here is the tree before putting in the little sequin "ornaments/light enhancers".



Here is the after. See any difference? Me neither.



This is a closeup of the sequins. See, they're reflective and they were brighter in person than the picture shows. They were even really close together. Bummer.



I even started strategically placing the sequins right next to the lights. I didn't bother putting them at the back of the tree because those wouldn't be seen anyway.

In the end, I think that the style of my tree with it's thick, drooping branches is what killed it.

I don't consider it a true loss. I'm sure those little sequin ornaments would be really cute on a twig tree centerpiece.

28 of 30: Love Language

If you haven't been following along from the beginning, click here.

What is your love language?

Alright, I wasn't sure what this was talking about at first, so I looked it up. There is a website where you can take a test that assesses your emotional communication preferences. You can take the test as a wife, husband, single person, children, parents of teenagers, etc. Here's the link: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessments/love/

The five love languages are Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. In the email I got it says, "The highest score indicates your primary love language (the highest score is 12). It's not uncommon to have two high scores, although one language does have a slight edge for most people. That just means two languages are important to you. The lower scores indicate those languages you seldom use to communicate love and which probably don't affect you very much on an emotional level."

My scores are as follows:

8 Words of Affirmation
7 Quality Time
5 Receiving Gifts
3 Acts of Service
7 Physical Touch

This is what is says about Words of Affirmation
"Actions don't always speak louder than words. If this is your love language, unsolicited compliments mean the world to you. Hearing the words, "I love you," are important--hearing the reasons behind that love sends your spirits skyward. Insults can leave you shattered and are not easily forgotten."

I find that this test was pretty accurate. I'm very much a verbal communicator and receiving positive feedback is very important to me. I also found it interesting that I had two second-highest scores that were very close to the top score. Unfortunately, I don't have the descriptions on that. If I were to want to know about those, there is a book I can purchase.

So, for those of you that have any interaction with me at all, here you have it. You now know how to best communicate with me. ;)

I just think that it's hilarious that I don't follow the "Actions speak louder that words." rule. For me, actions have the lowest score of all. Though, I think there is a little overlap in these categories. I mean, someone who is willing to spend quality time with me and help me feel good about myself, in my opinion would be performing an act of service for me.
As far as receiving gifts, I was surprised that it was higher than service to be honest with you. I suppose it has to do with the fact that I like to have things around me that remind me of people. And, I suppose you could also look at a gift as something non-physical if you want to go that far... :)

So, what's your Love Language? Seriously. I'd really like to know!

Until next time...

27 of 30: Favorite Body Part

If you haven't been following along from the beginning, click here.

What is your favorite part of your body and why?

This one makes me laugh just a little bit. But, I won't go there.

My favorite parts are my eyes. This isn't just because I think they are beautiful. I'll break it down for you.

I like my eyes because they ARE beautiful. They are deep blue with silver facets running through them. When I was young, my mother told me that I had the darkest blue eyes she had ever seen. They've since gotten a little bit lighter but they're still fairly dark. When I was younger and not ashamed of vanity, I used to say my favorite color was Sapphire Blue because my eyes were the same color. My son has very similar eyes and that makes me smile.

I also like my eyes because of the emotion that is always expressed through eyes in general. They tell so much about a person.

My final reason for liking my eyes is because of how useful they are. My first thought about this particular blog was that my hands were my favorite because I write with them. Then I thought, I need my eyes to write and I also need my eyes to read what I write. If not for my eyes, my hands wouldn't be able to what they do in this case. I can also track my love for writing back to my love for reading. If not for my eyes, I wouldn't have been able to read like I do.

So there you go.. :)