It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Before the Advent weekends, which are celebrated in our family according to German tradition we begin to decorate the house for Christmas. Advent are the 4 Sundays (each representing Hope, Peace, Joy and Love) leading up to Christmas Eve. (This is also the evening when we give and receive gifts, at around 6:00 PM, not in the morning of Dec. 25)


Usually we have a wreath with evergreens and four candles, every Advent Sunday we add a light.

image

I love the tradition and I have a small red four armed candle holder, which every year gets wrapped in green and sits then on our family dining table...
In Germany people usually do not have their trees set up before Christmas Eve, but we tweaked this in the American direction and enjoy our tree from mid December.
It is nice to have these four Sundays to not just go out and shop, but have time to sit together, sing or make music, have traditional Stollen and cookies and make plans for the new year. And although two of our four children are thoroughly American kids, they have embraced the traditions with pleasure and I hope they will one day continue this in their own families.


This year I attempt to read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol in installments, I think the children will now have the patience to sit through it...


And we will watch the movie, which came out 2009 and see it together.


Of course since they were little, they have had also each a Advent calendar, with 24 small windows to open every day in December till the 24. Pictures or tiny sweets mark every day till Christmas. They have become now also more common here in the States.

It could be like this (see here)
Or like this:


Found here.

We have a collection of small wooden Rauchermannchen-smoking man, little guys which burn small incense cones, yummy!



You may have noticed I have not gotten any greenery yet, I will go tomorrow to our nursery, a lovely place - coincidentally the owners are German and they make beautiful Advent decorations, wreaths, flowers, evergreens, trees. We have bought with them for the last 10 years and I look forward every year to Christmas time at their place. They serve coffee and Stollen every Sunday until Christmas and I feel quite at home there!
I love all our holiday traditions. Will you tell me a little about yours?


xx
Victoria



Images as labeled, book and movie via google image, all others by V.Zlotkowski

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Calendar 2011

By October the calendars are out in the shops and I eagerly await their arrival every year. I do not know why, but the thought of a new calendar makes me happy with anticipation and hope for the coming year. We usually have made plans by then for the next seasons, when to visit families and friends, what trips to plan and which places to visit. I love to see the month displayed on a beautiful calendar. And we like to write our laid out planes into the new calendar. Fixing plans on paper makes them become somewhat real, no?
We have had many different styles over the years, depending on our mood and interest: I remember Marc Chagall and Picasso, Japanese wood block prints, whimsical Norman Rockwell Americana, Tuscany and New England calendars, Castles of Scotland, plant drawings of the 18Th century, historic world maps and this year a collection of old Train posters (gorgeous).

For 2011 I selected this beauty:
'The Art of Ornament - Museum of Fine Arts Boston'


All images are works by Eugene Grasset, a graphic designer and teacher whose innovative decorative patterns were an important inspiration for the Art Nouveau style at the end of the nineteenth century. Born in Switzerland, Grasset was trained as an architect and moved in 1871 to Paris, where he began working as a designer for fabrics and graphic ornament. Adapting influences from sources as varied as medieval stained glass, Near Eastern art, and Japanese prints, Grasset developed his distinctive style of bold, strongly outlined colors for posters, ceramics, stained glass, and tapestries, in addition to the furnishings for a Montmartre cabaret.
He taught at the then newly established Ecole Normale d'Enseignement du Dessin, developed his theories of graphic design for his students, especially his reliance on natural forms as the basis for developing decorative motifs. His work has influenced many others!






I can't wait to hang it on it's usual spot, come end of December and to look forward to all the new year will bring!

More calendar inspirations can be found here.


XX
Victoria



Pictures by V.Zlotkowski

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