Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

07_Family Photo

On Christmas Eve when we were all dressed up for mass, Mom would sit us in front of the tree for a family photo. Clothing disclaimer: No, we weren't Mormon, it was just the late 80s/early 90s and I guess Newsies had just come out.

06_Cookie Party

Every year my Aunt Karen would host a cookie decorating party at her house. She baked gingerbread and sugar cookies ahead of time. Bowls of brightly colored icing, sprinkles and edible decorations of every kind were laid out before us. My cousins, siblings and I would go to town adorning the baked dough. At the end of the night we packed up a selection of the uneaten masterpieces in shirt boxes to bring home, ready for Santa's Christmas Eve plate.

05_Popcorn Chains

In the pre-microwave days, Mom would cook up a batch of popcorn in the yellow popcorn maker that sounded like a vacuum cleaner. My siblings and I would open a bag of plump cranberries, thread a needle and get to work making popcorn chains to decorate the tree with. They couldn't have been that long since we ate at least a third of the ingredients ourselves.

In other news, I'm pretty sure our current microwave died but it hasn't been too much of an issue yet. I'm giving it til after Christmas to see if we'll need to get another one.

A Brief Intermission

Nina Paley's independent animated feature Sita Sings the Blues is playing for a week (Dec 25-31) at the IFC center in New York.

If you haven't seen it yet or have only seen it online, I HIGHLY recommend checking it out on the big screen. I saw her progress on this film as self contained shorts over the past few years and the full film at a screening she held at NYU. It goes to show what one woman's talent, passion and perseverance can create within a few years.

04_Christmas Play

I think every kid has a memory of being in the school play, dressed as an angel in a nightgown, worried they'd forget their lines.

03_O Christmas Tree

My family lived across the road from a Christmas Tree farm. Our lovely neighbors never charged us more than $10 for a tree even when it towered over 7 feet. We'd walk over, pick out a tree, cut it down and drag it back across the dirt road on a plastic sled. Getting it through the door was another issue.

02_Advent Angel

I remember when my Mom finished making the advent calendar, so I was probably about 7 or 8. My sister (and later my brother) and I would take turns putting little toys and knickknacks into the pockets every day until Christmas. It was a big deal to get Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, so Mom made sure our turns were rotated accordingly each year.

White Christmas series

I'm doing a watercolor a day until Christmas. It was supposed to be the 12 days before Christmas, but I got sidetracked with holiday stuff.



As a kid, I couldn't wait for the Sears holiday catalog to come in the mail. I'd flip to the toys and dream of what Santa would bring. Even before I could read, I'd sit with the tome on my lap and make up stories for my sister.

The High Line

Another watercolor from the High Line Sketchcrawl last month.

some sketches from King Con

A bunch of sketchbook drawings I did at the table when I wasn't talking to people.

Asifa

Some marker sketches of a great model a few weeks ago. Due to various circumstances, I haven't been to Asifa drawing in a while. I'm looking forward to getting back into it tomorrow night.

I 95 N

A little watercolor I did while Allan and I drove back from Philly at the end of October. The trees are now bare outside my window as the winter weather creeps in!