The Frilly and Funkie Blog Challenge for December 6, 2017 is "Most Memorable Gift". To quote the Design Team:
"December for many of us is a time where we give and receive. ... I want you to be inspired by one of your most memorable gifts. Use that inspiration to create a vintage or shabby chic project. You can make a card, a tag, share a journal entry or any kind of project you desire. Just be sure to mention the memorable gift and how it inspired your creation."
Well, given how many Chrsitmases I have experienced, I should have a least one such gift, right? But try as I might, I couldn't come up with one memorable GIFT that *I* received that would serve as an inspiration for this card. Oh, there was the HUGE tricycle one year, the doll house another and even my very first adult watch... But they just didn't inspire. It's not that I don't have memorable gifts --- gifts just don' seem to be the memories I have of the holidays.
I have wonderful memories of childhood Christmases, which included the weird trees we always ended up with (my Dad was raised in a family where Santa brought the tree on Christmas Eve and decorated it before he left his gifts (a la European traditions) --- so when Dad went out to buy a tree, he usually could only find "Charlie Brown" kinds of trees... one year it was a redwood tree, another a pine painted silver, yet another one covered in white plastic snow, and then there was the one that was more juniper than pine and so VERY hard to decorate! There was the year the power went out when we lit the tree at night - actually this happened many years as the town's local power plant simply couldn't handle the load at Christmas time from all the trees being lit up at once! And there was the year I was allowed to help decorate for the first time: I must have been 9 or so and had recently decided that that fake Santa at the company Christmas party that gave me tea sets for four years running proved there was no Santa Claus! Surely if there WAS a Santa, he would KNOW what he gave the previous year, right? So I was allowed to stay up late and help, at least until the gifts were ready to be brought out. That night I broke an ornament, and was in tears when my Dad told me if he had a nickel for every ornament HE had broken over the years, he'd be VERY very rich!
Actually, that Christmas was the year I think I realized that tree decorating was a chore that Dad took on willingly for us kids, but only after several hits on the Johnny Walker Black! It was the time when, if one bulb burned out, the entire string wouldn't light so each and every light string had to be tested (my Dad, the engineer, had a method but it was still frustrating). And of course, there were the odd trees that had to be custom decorating (because redwoods and Junipers really aren't built for light strings and glass ornaments). And the "some assembly required" toys that were a little less than transparent, even without some alcohol under his belt! I'm sure he was hung over those wickedly early Christmas mornings when we three were clamoring to go downstairs and see what Santa had brought us!
So when I was 14 or so, my younger brother (brother #2 still believed in Santa then) and I determined that the ideal gift for Dad was to decorate the tree for him, He was quite expressive in his appreciation, although now, as an aging adult, I have to wonder if he felt a little cheated out of his annual surprise (and maybe his excuses for a little tipple or three of the best scotch whiskey! LOL)and maybe a little sad that his kids were growing up as well... . But that was the first year in our family that the tree was not a tightly held secret until our first glimpse on Christmas morning.
So my "memorable gift" is the fully decorated tree my brother and I presented our Father with that long ago Christmas Eve!
"December for many of us is a time where we give and receive. ... I want you to be inspired by one of your most memorable gifts. Use that inspiration to create a vintage or shabby chic project. You can make a card, a tag, share a journal entry or any kind of project you desire. Just be sure to mention the memorable gift and how it inspired your creation."
Well, given how many Chrsitmases I have experienced, I should have a least one such gift, right? But try as I might, I couldn't come up with one memorable GIFT that *I* received that would serve as an inspiration for this card. Oh, there was the HUGE tricycle one year, the doll house another and even my very first adult watch... But they just didn't inspire. It's not that I don't have memorable gifts --- gifts just don' seem to be the memories I have of the holidays.
I have wonderful memories of childhood Christmases, which included the weird trees we always ended up with (my Dad was raised in a family where Santa brought the tree on Christmas Eve and decorated it before he left his gifts (a la European traditions) --- so when Dad went out to buy a tree, he usually could only find "Charlie Brown" kinds of trees... one year it was a redwood tree, another a pine painted silver, yet another one covered in white plastic snow, and then there was the one that was more juniper than pine and so VERY hard to decorate! There was the year the power went out when we lit the tree at night - actually this happened many years as the town's local power plant simply couldn't handle the load at Christmas time from all the trees being lit up at once! And there was the year I was allowed to help decorate for the first time: I must have been 9 or so and had recently decided that that fake Santa at the company Christmas party that gave me tea sets for four years running proved there was no Santa Claus! Surely if there WAS a Santa, he would KNOW what he gave the previous year, right? So I was allowed to stay up late and help, at least until the gifts were ready to be brought out. That night I broke an ornament, and was in tears when my Dad told me if he had a nickel for every ornament HE had broken over the years, he'd be VERY very rich!
Actually, that Christmas was the year I think I realized that tree decorating was a chore that Dad took on willingly for us kids, but only after several hits on the Johnny Walker Black! It was the time when, if one bulb burned out, the entire string wouldn't light so each and every light string had to be tested (my Dad, the engineer, had a method but it was still frustrating). And of course, there were the odd trees that had to be custom decorating (because redwoods and Junipers really aren't built for light strings and glass ornaments). And the "some assembly required" toys that were a little less than transparent, even without some alcohol under his belt! I'm sure he was hung over those wickedly early Christmas mornings when we three were clamoring to go downstairs and see what Santa had brought us!
So when I was 14 or so, my younger brother (brother #2 still believed in Santa then) and I determined that the ideal gift for Dad was to decorate the tree for him, He was quite expressive in his appreciation, although now, as an aging adult, I have to wonder if he felt a little cheated out of his annual surprise (and maybe his excuses for a little tipple or three of the best scotch whiskey! LOL)and maybe a little sad that his kids were growing up as well... . But that was the first year in our family that the tree was not a tightly held secret until our first glimpse on Christmas morning.
So my "memorable gift" is the fully decorated tree my brother and I presented our Father with that long ago Christmas Eve!
Products used in the making of this card were:
- Stamps: Stampers Anonymous “Watercolor Trees” (CMS317)
- Inks: Distress Inks “Iced Spruce” and “Pine Needles”; Delicate “Golden Glitter”; Archival “Vermillion”; Intense Pencils “Cherry” (0510), “Sea Blue” (1200), “Deep Indigo” (1000) and “Antique White” (2300); Snowman extra fine point marker “gold”
- Papers: The Write Stock Value Pack “white”
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