Okay now we’re REALLY getting into the spirit of Christmas.  Today we went back to Bush House to check on the decorating handiwork of last week and it was looking lovely.  Today’s open house was crowded and fun with music and even Santa Claus (though I wonder what Mr. Bush and daughter Sally would have made of the whole town traipsing through their parlors…)

and this Victorian lady in front of the tree:

Santa and Ms. Claus were in the library

and Santa chatted with Milo Bucci and Dave Rigsby and his boys

Then we put a few more ornaments on my Mom’s little tree

and EXHAUSTED by sheer cheer, headed to the Bean for a coffee

Phew.  And there’s still two weeks left!!?!

Tonight’s the last night for bids on the very fun shrine show at the Corvallis Art Center.  100 artists were given a box and then made “shrines” of various types.  This week I ran down to see the show and took shots of a few Salem artists represented.  There’s still time to get down there tonight and bid!!!!

Emily Stuart’s “Reliquary for a green pin”

Layne Young’s “Beyond Words”

Doug Dacar’s “Thimble”

Kay Worthingon’s “Container for the Small and Discarded”

My “Shrine to Invincibility”

and Kristin Kuhn’s beautiful “Woods”

When I was a child Christmas time was magical to me.  Stuff happened, cookies were made, trees were brought in, presents were awaiting.  Everything about Christmas and the days leading up to it seemed magical and fun and…sort of unfathomable from my child’s eye view.  I don’t feel that way anymore, though I remember as a young adult feeling it slip away.  So every year I try to recover a tiny bit of the magic.  Unwrapping the Christmas ornaments begins with removing the old section of the Chicago tribune that was packing and keeping the ornaments safe

and now I don’t have a nine foot tall tree filled with tinsel, I DO still have the ornaments.  And the ornaments have the magic.

Maybe this is because I just stared and stared at them so much when I was a kid?

Today I really got in the seasonal mood by going as a volunteer to Bush House Museum, Salem’s lovely Victorian house museum.  The Christmas open house there is the 13th so the elves arrived today to decorate.  It always lifts my spirit to muck about in an historic house (other than our own) this time of year.  Here’s what happened:

The tree arrived from Gretchen and Dennis Carnaby’s

and the Parks Department was on hand to get it into the house

SAra trimmed the bottom

elves:

and Sara and Dennis tighten the stand

First the garlands of glass beads went on

the ornaments came out

there was a brief excercise break

we finished the mantles

admired the tree

ate our lunches and posed for a photo op

and took off into the sunshine to begin our own Christmas preparations.

Had coffee with Elizabeth and the adorable Alex the other morning.  It caused me to remember trying to make art on top of the washing machine, and other adventures of young motherhood.  I’ve known Elizabeth since before she was born so we go way back.  She is making nice paintings of a small scale and is just about to blow it all up and work larger, in part due to some thinking she’s done after an inspirational lecture by jewelry maker Nancy Worden.  This year there was a nice spread on her work in William Bragg’s “The Salem Project” and she has a blog and an Etsy shop.  In March she has a show in Sellwood at Tilde.  She has been working small because she has a small space, panels stored next to wine glasses in the dining room, with Alex nearby in her own creative world of castles and princesses.

I brought “Gertrude” home

and Liz has a painting of mine hilariously displayed:

Meanwhile Alex lives in her own imaginative world of castles and princesses

La Capitale looked festive last night:

I’m sort of in love with red duct tape, which I have been for some years…ever since Sam’s shoes.  But Kay has this piece she’s been working on that absolutely knocks me out.  Today I saw it in finished form:

She finished it off just before she broke her thumb (table saw kick-back).

I’d like to wrap something really big in red duct tape, a small house maybe.  It’s just so beautiful.

Today Roger turned 40 again and the whole weekend was devoted to small celebrations .  It was sunny and beautiful at the beach

so the weekend was organized around whatever the birthday person wanted to do.  Beach walk of course:

and the beach full of spindrift:

it was warm and sunny and calm–he didn’t even need a coat!

Later on we walked on our own Bay beach at about 4:00 when the light was starting to leave:

These two boys (trying to catch a crab) reminded the art historian of a Winslow Homer print:

Here’s the new beach access from the beach side…access not being a TOTALLY accurate description…

Today presents and breakfast in bed, and one last walk on the beach

where it was pretty beautiful:

On the way back to the valley we stopped for a coffee behind a land yacht:

and then headed back into the valley gloom, bouyed for the new year ahead by the beachy sun

Happy Birthday Roger!!  I love you!!!

We checked out the results of Urban renewal funds this weekend at the beach and they include:

a new pump house slightly nicer than most of the homes in Cutler City

a new cross walk to the beach access:

a new beach acess:

and even the sewer grate is pretty good looking:

There’s a new trail around Turtle Lake too, but we haven’t taken that yet.  Is that the whole $2.5 million I wonder???

Saw this photo in the paper:

so we got this shot of the same place today..oh dear…

Is this concrete surrealism…????