soooo..Zentangles..what are these crazy things thatseem to be dominating our schedules these days?? We
are all having so much fun with them. I will refer you
to the original website, http://www.zentangle.com/.
Be sure to keep it singular, instead of the word
zentangles...as I have sent multiple people to a
neighborhood dating service by having that typo...I am lucky none of my customers has eloped with a crazy internet 
weirdo...OK, maybe some of you have, but still, ...not completely my fault. Anyway, it is a new art form that anyone can do...really, anyone...it is freehand drawing, purposeful lines,...in some cases it takes a little getting used to, but the patterns emerge, and cool, fun art is produced. In the process, though, you will find yourself completely absorbed in a very relaxing way, in the whole experience. Plus, its great for anytime you have to wait somewhere...doctor's office, car repair place, tattoo parlor, bank heist (in case you are driving the get-away car...but be careful. it can be very absorbing...and as your robber friends are making a mad dash for you and the car, you may be making a very complex design, and thinking, y'know guys, this just isn't a good time for me to stop drawing right now...I don't even want to think of the problems that will ensue at that point, so maybe hold off on the abetting a robbery, at least for now.) I carry my pen, pencil and shading tool, along with a small notebook, everywhere I go.
What to do with it? Definitely your choice. Add it to some of your current art endeavors, appreciate it on its own, like a well-loved watercolor scene, use it in your journalling, make jewelry, and other small objets de art (not quite sure on the spelling there...maybe getting too sophisticated for my own good.) In any case, we are just loving it here. I went away for a few days to become a Certified Zentangle Teacher, learning at the feet of Maria & Rick, who developed this whole new world. Aside from meeting very talented people and being blown away by everything they had all done, I also learned quite a bit.
What to do with it? Definitely your choice. Add it to some of your current art endeavors, appreciate it on its own, like a well-loved watercolor scene, use it in your journalling, make jewelry, and other small objets de art (not quite sure on the spelling there...maybe getting too sophisticated for my own good.) In any case, we are just loving it here. I went away for a few days to become a Certified Zentangle Teacher, learning at the feet of Maria & Rick, who developed this whole new world. Aside from meeting very talented people and being blown away by everything they had all done, I also learned quite a bit.
Check out this week's newsletter, as I have added another Class, "D." My mind is very busy these days preparing the advanced class, filled with lots of cool things. Here is a photo from one of the beginner classes...looks like everyone got the hang of it.
I am looking forward to putting our own little AE twist on it, by adding some Ranger Stickles, (along with Copic markers, as I did on the "three xmas trees" card... first I stamped the blank tree three times, then I added Zentangles to each section of the tree, after which I used the Copic markers and Stickles.) Distress Crackle, hardening gel and the UV lamp, die-cutting, inserting words, creating layers with foam tape...I could go on, but we need to pick a random winner for the blog prize. Go to the newsletter, to find out if it is you! Below is a photo of the
prize for this coming week,... a 12 x 12 calendar set, with stickers to help create a 2010 projecet.
It was great to see that we have all internalized some great advice. A huge thanks to everyone who gave us that advice!! Onward we go, with today's question: When you remember Christmases, or other winter holidays from your youth, what memory sticks out the most...a tradition, a trip, a certain gift, a certain person??? I have a couple:..We were never allowed to put up our tree until the evening of christmas eve...we didn't even buy it til then...so the pickings at the lot were somewhat slim...but my dad had to have the biggest tree available...so he always got one that was way too big to fit in our room...made sense that we would cut off a bit, right??...Well, he always cut off the top, so every year we ended up with a christmas trapezoid, filled with tinsel...but that baby was big!! I'll try to find some photos of some of them. Another memory...riding into NYC from the suburbs, to visit my most beloved Grandmother, Nana...she was like a saint, cozy apron, warm hugs, total acceptance, always on our side...we would ride a tiny elevator (the kind with the grated door that you have to pull sideways to close.)..up to the 6th floor, and enter her apartment, a very narrow, barely two bedroom place...but to us, it was heaven..we used to explore her bureaus, boxes under the beds, ...the old fridge always had bottles of coke, and of course, there were christmas cookies...her special recipe, that I still use to this day...the apartment was also very hot most of the time, so I remember sitting by a window, looking out into an alley, and feeling worlds apart from my real life...as we all got older, into adolescence, this became more of a chore, and we would wistfully wish ourselves back home with all of our friends...but apparently the feelings of warmth and love I felt at those times when I was younger have lasted and are what I remember most.
OK, now its your turn.
I remember Christmas Eves before I moved away from home as always quiet, expectant, contemplative times with just the immediate family, without the craziness of relatives and traveling and tearing open gifts. We always had a special small supper, a lot of times kielbasa or pierogis and my mom's special cottage cheese and raisin danish. We went to midnight mass, when I always looked forward to Brian Kingsley, the organist, singing "O Holy Night", my favorite carol, in his heartbreakingly beautiful voice. Before we went to bed we would light a bayberry candle to burn all night and bring us luck in the coming year.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite gifts ever was about 11 years ago from my boyfriend (now husband)..we had been together for about 2 years. He had this big box all wrapped up and when I would shake it to try & guess what was in it there was all this rolling and clanking and rattling...I had no idea what it was! When Christmas day finally came, I opened it and it was a gorgeous leather coat! He had spoiled me rotten (and he still does! 8>) AND he had tricked me but good by putting a bunch of marbles in the box to throw my guessing off track -- it was a fun surprise and the first of many "special" gifts from him.
I remember decorating the tree with our collection of ornaments from years past. We each had our 'special' favorite ornaments, and whowever unwrapped them from the tissue paper would hand those to the person who had claimed it years before to hang on the tree themselves. Mine was a mirrored ornament, similar to a microscope slide. every year the silver wore off a bit, and it got more and more faded. It is still my favorite ornament.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad was a fireman and always worked some part of Christmas. We just worked around his schedule, so some years we were all up at 4am to get stockings and then the presents under the tree before he went to work at 7am. We would all go back to bed for a few extra hours of sleep after he left. The years he worked Christmas Eve, were really hard. We would be up early for stockings, but were not allowed downstairs until Dad got home, about 7:30, and he always wanted to eat breakfast before we got to open presents. I now work as a nurse, and being flexible over the holidays has never been a problem, it just takes me back, and makes me smile remembering the great times we had when we were all kids.
ReplyDeleteMy absolutely favorite memory was the few years we lived next door to the High School principal, Mr. Potter (Harold BTW, I kid you not)I was in 3rd-5th grade. Mr. Potter knew every kid in a 50 mile radius. In our neighborhood, on Christmas eve, he would get a ladder, dress as Santa and walk across our roofs (at least 10 houses, 10 kids he did this for). He always made lots of noise. The parents would send us out to see Santa and he would laugh a Ho, Ho, Ho and drop down a gift for us and disappear. Those Christmas' were the most excitng and the best ever! Magic is everywhere!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memory is of the cardboard fireplace that we would erect every year. We didn't have a real fireplace to hang our stockings, so this one, with the orange light bulb and tin fan to make the cardboard flames look real, was our spot. On Christmas morning, we'd usually find the fireplace fallen over on the floor due to the weight of our filled stockings!
ReplyDeleteWe have so many Christmas traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation and while I look forward to them this year something else has started to emerge. I have noticed everywhere I go lately candy. I know candy is everywhere but this is special candy.....my Grandmother's candy. Every Christmas after gifts and breakfast we would head over to see "gram" she was my favorite (even named my daughter after her) we would go in her room to see her (she was usually laying down resting in bed) and her dresser would be covered in the most beautiful candies....the old fashioned ribbon candy, the fruit slices that were so rich in color they would make your mouth water at the site of them and boxes and boxes of chocolate.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten about the candy until last week. I had been out shopping in Boston with my husband and I turned around in a candy shop in Fanieul Hall and right there, in the same box, was Grams ribbon candy. I instantly travelled back in time to her room on Christmas day, the smell of her perfume, the touch of her skin and those beautiful blue eyes and her loving smile as it offered me a piece of that most delicious and beautiful ribbon candy.
It's a memory that I had forgotten until last week. I miss that ribbon candy and I miss my Gram. I have decided to take time this holiday season to remember the little things that used to make my Christmas' so special and create a mini scrapbook loaded with all the little things. Because even if they seemed so small at the time, hingsight has showed me they will be some of the most important in years to come.
I was just about the age when I doubted that there really was a Sata Claus. My parents had gotten a stuffed Santa--stood about 2 feet and put it on the landing on our stairs. Well, my sister and I got up early and were ready to go downstairs and peek--- we got to the top of the stairs and who is sitting on the landing but Santa!!!! Oh my God, we ran back to bed and waited till daylight to get up! Our family still has that Santa--he is probably about 45 years old. When I look at him I can't beleive that we thought it was the real Santa. But ever since then I Believe!!!
ReplyDeleteThe two that come to my mind first both make me smile.
ReplyDeleteThe first was sort of a pre-Christmas tradition of making Christmas sugar cookies. I remember helping my mom. She would roll the dough and cut them, the kids would decorate them with sugars, red hots, etc. Last year she passed down her pastry cloth to me & it makes all the difference in the cookies! Now I bake Christmas cookies with my children.
The second tradition was a first-thing Christmas morning one. As soon as everyone was awake, my dad would go down to the living room & get his movie camera ready to capture footage of us 3 kids running down the hallway & into the living room (where the tree & gifts were). Unfortunately, this tradition was terribly flawed in two ways. First, there was a spot light mounted on the camera for better lighting. So in spite of just waking up, we had to attempt navigating the hallway three-abreast with a high-powered spotlight in our eyes. The second flaw was that about 3/4 of the way down the hallway, there was a small shelf mounted on the wall (probably about 4-4 1/2 feet up from the floor). I think each of us kids took a turn running into that shelf (which of course would just clock you right in the head). This is one of those traditions that is so awful you just have to laugh. I remember doing this tradition up into high school! When are family is together for Christmas, this tradition almost always comes up (followed by both laughing and a little head rubbing). :)
I have to laugh when I think of this but we had a silver foil christmas tree with blue glass balls and a special rotating light of red, green and yellow that was pointed at the tree, I guess to reflect the color on the silver foil. In retrospect, it sure was ugly be we got excited putting it up every year haha!
ReplyDeleteThe one Christmas memory I will always treasure is the year my little brother (who is now 36!) was determined to see Santa. Our house didn't have a chimney so he figured Santa had to come through the front door. Sometime after we all went to sleep he pulled his blanket off his bed and went out to the living room and sat in the chair directly across from the door, and watched, and waited. Well, needless to say, he feel asleep. And that is where we found him Christmas morning, curled up in a little ball, wrapped in his blanket, in the chair!!!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memories happened Christmas morning. We weren't allowed to leave our rooms until my parents said it was time, but of course we all tried really hard to see into the livingroom where the tree and presents were (we lived in a small ranch). Eventually my father would come and get us and we had a Christmas parade (think follow the leader). We marched into every room, over beds, around furniture, in circles right by the presents and into the kitchen for a breakfast of homemade apple pie and a glass of milk because there was no way we could sit still longer than that. By the time we were done eating our pie, we couldn't wait to go and rip into our presents, but we had to open them one at a time and show everyone else what we had gotten.
ReplyDeleteMemories of christmas.... the year we got one of the old (now)fashioned wooden toboggens.... making a real old fashioned gingerbread house using the recipe my great-great grandma brought over from Germany (gets ROCK hard) and using two domino sugar boxes to support it while it dried as a house. ... the year we made cookies to send to my brother stationed on the Carrier Midway - when things were heating up in the gulf in the 80's... and roast lamb on Christmas day. oooh, and the endless waiting for dad to get set for the day. we could open our stockings, but not presents until he came downstairs.
ReplyDeleteJenny B in Beverly
favorite memories of christmas....christmas morning, coming down the stairs, and my dad had hte movie camera with the huge lights on it, 4 of them, that would blind you and you couldn't see the toys under the tree. Mrs Claus used to make most of the things in my stocking. But before looking at toys, I would always run to the Creche to see if Baby Jesus was in the manger, it was always a Christmas miracle to me, that he would appear on Christmas morning.....I also remember the year I got my Chatty Cathy, I was a little older, and not sure if Santa was real, but I tell you, Santa IS real, my parents NEVER would have bought me a Chatty Cathy doll!!!!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite Christmas memory and tradition is when we celebrate St. Nicholas Day on December 6th. It's a German tradition where on the night of the 5th you put your shoe by the door with your letter to St. Nicholas in it (which essentially is your wish-list). If you were good, the next morning when you woke, you'd have lots of candy in your shoe! Each year, it was always a little nerve-racking waiting through the night...were we good in the past year? To this day, everyone in the family still writes Letters to St. Nicholas and they are still "due" on December 6th. Because we are spread all over the US, St. Nicholas has been known to send us each a holiday centerpiece to the house or the office. No matter what it is, we all have to call each other to see what we got in our "shoes". It's really funny, because even the delivery note says - "this is your shoe".
ReplyDeleteI will always remember when I was 3,4,5 years old, my dad coming in from work on Christmas eve and telling me that he had just heard on the radio that "Sandy Claus" had been spotted by military radar heading over the North Pole. It had to be real if the military saw him and they said it on the radio, right?
ReplyDeleteI was 5 years old and went snooping in the closet and found a Betsy McCall doll my older sister had gotten for me. She found out and had a fit. She told me she took it back to the store. I think I cried until Christmas. Christmas morning when I opened my oddly shaped gift from her it was Betsy herself wrapped in a paper towel tube.
ReplyDeleteSo many wonderful Christmas memories - Christmas Eve dinners were the special meals in our family....There were 2 dinners, one at each Grandmother’s house. 1st one was a Mushroom soup that I can still taste in my head :). Dinner was served at the site of the first evening star. Next dinner was also meatless. Tradition was an odd number of selections. Table was set with 1 empty place setting in case of a visitor from the Holy Family. We all would share a piece of the wafer and offer good wishes for those that we shared with. Midnight mass tradition with the world's worst sounding church choir singing our traditional Polish songs and the director waving her arms so that we were sure that she would fly off the choir loft .. lol ... nonetheless wonderful memories. My Mom was ALWAYS LATE getting to the car for Midnight mass...we always had to wait for her...and miraculously Santa had arrived while we were at church (Duh!). We would open all of the gifts, stay awake till the wee hours of the a.m. finally go to bed and wake up later that morning ...to play with all of the toys that Mom...er I mean Santa had put out for us!!! till this day...gift giving and opening is a special part of our celebration and have to open at least one around midnight....because of the fond memories that we shared...sooo many more traditions and memories...too many to share but thanks for giving me the opportunity to recall them all!
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