holidays | kimberly ah

Dec 03 2013

celebrations, holidays, homemaking, Thanksgiving, vintage, what's for dinner

Our Thanksgiving 2013

It’s not too late to share our Thanksgiving, right?

Naoto and I hosted my parents for Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday afternoon. As usual, we had a grand time with them, cooking, eating, drinking and cleaning up the massive kitchen mess. And as it has been for the past seven years, Naoto did all of the cooking (except the cranberries!) and I did all of the cleaning and decorating. In honor of his Thanksgiving duties, I gave Naoto this apron that I bought from Nourishing Notes during Show of Hands. He rocked the apron with his pajamas all day long. (It was a very relaxed holiday.) Ever since I made the vintage ephemera Thanksgiving invitations, I had visions of incorporating some more ephemera into the table centerpiece. And, since I was using old paper, it only made sense to get vintage colors and vintage dishes into the mix. The wonderful thing was, other than the flowers, I had everything I needed right in my china cabinet and buffet. (It pays to be a dish hoarder sometimes.)I was excited to use my vintage Taylor Smith Taylor dishes. My mom and I found a whole set at a thrift store for $10 a few years ago and I bought them with the intent of using them for Thanksgiving. They were perfect for the table this year. (And thanks, Mom, for hand washing them after dinner!) Naoto’s turkey was perfect, the stuffing was amazing (in spite of a close call with an almost-forgotten egg) and, along with the cranberries, we enjoyed fluffy mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted cauliflower, Hawaiian rolls and a tasty caramel apple cheesecake that my mom made. There is a reason I look forward to this meal every year. (But man, am I ever ready for pizza after the long weekend of leftovers!)The chef was glad to have another successful year under his apron belt. Today I am (finally) putting away Thanksgiving for another year, and hopefully dipping into the Christmas decorations. We are hosting two small parties the next two weekends, so time to break out the Christmas spirit. It’s one of those years when retailers make you feel like you’re running behind…cheers to enjoying the season!

If you’d like to relive Thanksgiving 2012, go here.

Tagged celebrations, decorating, food, holidays, home, homemaking, parents, Thanksgiving, Trader Joe's, vintage

Nov 27 2013

4 Comments

holidays, Oh Presley!, thoughts

10 Things

Here are ten things I’m thinking about this morning before I get to work:

1. I need to be a better weekly housekeeper.

2. I should have finished cleaning out the spare room last week.

3. I can’t believe I got all of the grocery shopping done in one shot (okay, two shots if you count the fact that I had Naoto go to Jewel to grab some things on sale and our favorite ciabatta for the stuffing.) It will be a miracle if we really have everything we need for tomorrow’s dinner.

4. I’m more than excited to make this again this year. I’ve been craving it since September!

5. We got another new rug this week and I’m anxious to see how it fits…buying stuff for our home always feels so risky!

6. I’m meeting one of my pen pals in person on Friday. We’re going to Pieritz together.

7. We are making roasted cauliflower instead of green bean casserole tomorrow, but now I’m worried our meal might be too monochromatic.

8. Every weekend in December is already booked. I’m not used to being this social.

9. I’m excited to do my Christmas cards this year. Now that I’ve given up on making them myself, I can focus on writing in them and mail art.

10. I need to come up with a creative placecard idea for tomorrow…even though there are only four of us…it’s all about tradition.

Tagged celebrations, holidays, homemaking, Thanksgiving

Nov 15 2013

3 Comments

celebrations, crafty adventures, holidays, snail mail, Thanksgiving, vintage

Vintage Ephemera Thanksgiving Invitations

I am happy to report that my Thanksgiving invitations are done and in the mail! Seriously, where is this month going? At one point I felt crazy for starting to think about these invites so early, then they barely made it into the mail in time.They aren’t super complicated, but I had a lot of fun putting the mini collages together. Everything on the invite is vintage except the little strip of washi. I needed another metallic element to complement the gold seal. Once I saw the old BINGO cards in my stash, I knew I wanted them to be the base. I love the yellowed paper and the graphic numbers as a background. And of course I had to use my typewriter since tags don’t feed into my (non-existent) printer. I typed out my message and played around with the placement of the vintage postage stamps and gold seals (from a Saturday Morning Vintage Thanksgiving paper pack and fall ephemera bundle) . I pasted everything on with my favorite glue stick because, as I learned at the Halloween Mail Art Workshop, glue sticks work best with delicate vintage papers. The invitation above is the one I sent my parents. The maroon stamp on the bottom (with the gold star) is in honor of railroad workers. My maternal grandpa worked on the railroads, so I think my mom will appreciate that little detail. I had the fig-colored envelopes in A2, which was 1/8 inch too small…so I had to go out and buy some roomy A6 fig envelopes. I made another collage on the front of the envelope with papers from from my ephemera packs (the leaf is a playing card!), some MT washi tape, an old gold border label and a new sticker (Paper Source). I lined my envelopes with marbled paper from Blick. I love this paper. It had a gorgeous mix of maroons, greens, golds and silvers…so dreamy. (And it was in my paper stash ready to be spent out!)

So there they are…done for another year. Now it’s time to work on ideas for the table and…clean!! For more Thanksgiving shenanigans, go here.

Have a good weekend! I’ll be busy today and tonight cramming for book group! The Sea-Wolf here I come!

Tagged crafts, diy, holidays, mail art, snail mail, Thanksgiving, washi tape

Nov 13 2013

Easy Thanksgiving Invitations

I’m still finishing the real Thanksgiving invitations. I had to go out and buy a bigger envelope size (defeating the purpose of using up my stash, but I’m really excited about how the invitations turned out so I needed the just right envelope color!)

When I was playing around with ideas for Thanksgiving invitations (before rediscovering my stash of vintage ephemera) I came up with these as an option. We don’t have a home printer. (Ours broke over a year ago, and I after sifting through thousands of online reviews, I couldn’t make a decision. At this point, I question whether we really need one.) So I decided that my typewriter would be my printing method. I found these leftover paper leaves in my fall decorations bin. The leaves come in a variety of colors, but the ones I chose are shimmery gold. It’s not a perfect paper for the typewriter, especially since my new ribbon is pretty inky, but they worked out okay as long as I didn’t smear the ink with my fingers. The oval-shaped leaf was easy to work with but the “oak” leaf gave me problems because all of its little bumpy edges kept getting stuck as I typed each line…it’s fine though…the little tears just look like texture.

Once I was done typing, I pasted the leaves onto some shimmery antique gold cards and topped them off with a little piece of washi tape. I’m going to put them in some leftover fig envelopes (from Thanksgivings past) and send them to my brother and sister and their families. They don’t join us for Thanksgiving, but it’s always nice to be invited, right?

Tagged celebrations, crafts, diy, holidays, mail art, snail mail, Thanksgiving, washi tape

Nov 11 2013

1 Comment

Honor Flight Chicago

Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day!

A special thanks to John & Chester (pictured above) and all of the veterans in my family–dad, grandpa, uncle, cousins–who have served.

Photo from the Honor Flight Chicago website from our October 2, 2013 flight.

Tagged adventures, celebrations, holidays, Honor Flight Chicago

Nov 08 2013

1 Comment

crafty adventures, holidays, Office Supplies, thrifted, vintage

Vintage Paper Hoarder

I am working on my Thanksgiving invitations today. I have a plan and it involves using up some of my vintage paper collection. I have a giant bin of ephemera that I’ve collected over time. Many things were purchased from Saturday Morning Vintage (Xenia’s shop is so good and most of what is shown above is from a Thanksgiving paper pack that I bought this year.) and from flea markets and thrift shops. Few things in life make me happier than discovering an old box of labels or flashcards at the thrift store.

As I was sifting through my ephemera stash, I was thinking about my 2013 goal to spend out. While I’ve done a very good job wearing out my clothes, using up my stationery and scrapbook supplies, eating my Japanese snacks and hanging up my artwork, I’ve been hesitant to use up the vintage stuff…the stuff that I can’t replace quite as easily… But it’s better to let these papers live on in another form (as mail art or an invitation) than to languish in a bin, right? So I spent part of my afternoon sorting through things and pulling out pieces for certain projects (Thanksgiving and Christmas related right now) and sorting the rest by color or style. I am now prepared to use up and spend out some of my collection. I’m moving a little bit of it onto my desk so it’s handy for mail art and leaving the rest in the bin ready for the next project.

Hopefully, I can finish up the invitations this weekend and show them to you next week, once they’ve arrived at their destinations. In the meantime, have a good weekend!

Tagged celebrations, crafts, holidays, mail art, office supplies, snail mail, Thanksgiving

Nov 04 2013

1 Comment

adventures, Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening

Beginning a Quiet November…

This weekend, Naoto and I attended a Forest Park Community Garden fundraiser–the 2nd Annual Apple Pie Bake-Off. We did not bake a pie but we did eat the delicious pies in the competition. We had another fun night mingling with our fellow gardeners, having caricatures drawn (isn’t Naoto’s adorable?), goofing around in the photo booth and bidding on silent auction items. Naoto proudly walked away the winner of an hour lecture by a PhD. Our topic? Whiskey. I’m very excited to invite some friends over for a little whiskey tasting and lecture next month.

The Honor Flight Chicago season also ended last week, with our final flight of 2013 on Wednesday and our volunteer appreciation party on Friday night. As much as I’m going to miss my fellow volunteers this winter, I am looking forward to settling into the fall, finally, and preparing for a (hopefully) quiet holiday season. This week is light on responsibilities so I’m determined to get my Thanksgiving invitations made and get a jump start on holiday preparations around here. That means cleaning the spare room (the chore that never ends) and finding some art to hang on that pesky dining room wall… There’s nothing like a holiday to get you in the mood to work on your neglected home making skills!

Tagged adventures, forest park, gardening, holidays, home, homemaking, Honor Flight Chicago

Nov 01 2013

4 Comments

adventures, Halloween, Office Supplies, snail mail

Spooky Saturday: Halloween Letter Social

Last Saturday was Halloween themed. After the Casket Races on Saturday morning, I went to a Halloween Letter Social at Pieritz Bros. The Letter Writers Alliance once again teamed up with everyone’s favorite office supply store to host letter writing and typewriter typing. I used that festive orange number up above…it typed like a dream in a lovely cursive and I was able to crank out three letters during the social. Thanks to the Halloween Mail Art Workshop, the Letter Social, and a letter writing cram session on Monday morning, I have almost caught up on my correspondence. Almost. I used some of my vintage postage, but I really loved the look of the Johnny Cash stamp on the black envelopes.

It feels good to be participating in the world of mail again.

Tagged adventures, Halloween, holidays, mail art, office supplies, snail mail, washi tape

Oct 31 2013

1 Comment

adventures, Forest Park, Oak Park, holidays

Spooky Saturday: Casket Races

Last Saturday, Forest Park hosted its second annual Casket Races. Forest Park is sometimes known as the “village of cemeteries”–our dead-to-living ratio is 30 to 1–so it is only fitting that we have a race of caskets as a fairly new annual Halloween tradition. Basically, contestants build a “casket” (or a casket-like car) and one person rides in the casket while the other four “pall bearers” push it down the block. It was a super-fast moving race (in most cases), but the best part was checking out the different designs and costumes of each team. I love events like these, especially when regular people, organizations and businesses take part and create awesomely themed “caskets”. The casket above is made from a refrigerator…it totally lost (refrigerators have way too much drag to be real contenders!) but coming from an appliance store (Grand on Madison) it was the perfect casket for the race. This one was my personal favorite…the Stanley Cup casket was brilliant. The Grateful Dead casket was an entry from a local bar, McGaffer’s. Their runners were decked out in tie-dye, of course. The ice cream “trough” casket (peeking out from behind the Dead casket) was from Brown Cow Ice Cream Shop.
This team won for Spookiest Casket for the second year in a row. There were also trophies for first, second and last place, as well as funniest and coolest caskets. If I owned a local business, I would totally be taking a part in this community event. As a matter of fact, I think I might have to encourage my fellow community gardeners to participate next year. How fun would a garden vegetable themed casket be?

(For more–and better–pictures, check out the Forest Park Review’s article here!)

Tagged adventures, forest park, holidays

Oct 21 2013

2 Comments

adventures, crafty adventures, holidays, snail mail

Halloween Mail Art Party

Confession: I haven’t written a letter since the beginning of August. But when I saw that Donovan was hosting a Halloween Mail Art Workshop at Greer on Saturday, I knew that making some creative Halloween envelopes would be just the thing to jump start my letter writing again. I’m pretty excited to fill up these envelopes with responses to letters I received back in August and September. Donovan had the table stocked with orange, black and purple papers, washi tapes, envelopes and plenty of spooky ephemera, rubber stamps and labels. The four of us in attendance had great time poking through everything and sticking and pasting the bits into mail art creations. I love to watch other people create mail art. Sharing ideas and mail stories are the best parts of these events. You can tell from our completed collection that everyone had different approaches and lots of creativity.
One of my favorite pieces to use was the Frankenstein napkin. Donovan showed us that you can peel the napkin layers and use the images for mail art. They are delicate but fun to work with, and we all used “Frank” in different ways…I especially love him on the black envelope (above left, made by Emily)…the black background gives it a spookier effect! Donovan sent us each home with a goodie bag filled with labels, tickets and amazing vintage postage. I’m determined to use it all up on the rest my mail art envelopes with the exception of the Alfred Hitchcock stamp…I get a little hoard-y when it comes to this stamp. I love Hitchcock and the stamp has a tiny little cut out of his profile…so good!

I am excited to write some letters this week and get back on track with my correspondence. My mailbox has been lonely lately and the only remedy for that is to send some mail out into the world knowing it will be returned in good time. And, if I don’t catch up completely with my letters this week, the Letter Writers Alliance has a Halloween letter writing social at Pieritz on Saturday. It’s as though the universe is telling me to make time for mail again.

You can read about the 2012 Halloween Mail Art Party here.

Tagged adventures, crafts, Halloween, holidays, mail art, rubber stamp, snail mail, washi tape