Silver White Winters

Posted on by a chef's wife

Well, it’s just about a month out from Christmas, and I am finally climbing out of the what-day-is-it fog. I know, it’s really saying something. Our family had an amazing Christmas break, packed with a ton of fun and social events, we all kinda crashed and burned this weekend. For the first time in over two months, the only commitment we had was a basketball game. It was a much needed break for us all, despite my kiddos opinions.

Funny thing about winter, coming down off the holiday high can be so difficult for so many of us, me included. I miss seeing my family everyday and laughing, and not caring about calories, or laundry, or all the things that can often weigh me down daily. It’s no secret 2018 had it’s challenges. Then we closed the year out being told our roof needed to be replaced. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

There are years that the second the kids go back to school the decorations come down and my need to get our house in order kicks in. This was not that year. For the first time in a long time, I took advantage of the extra week between Thanksgiving and Christmas and found myself relaxing. I didn’t feel pressure to get things up, and when I was decorating, I was enjoying it.

I moved our Christmas tree from it’s old spot to a new spot, and I loved the way the boys decorated it, and I wasn’t really ready to let it all go so quickly this year. BUT, as I tell the boys, “It’s not special if we leave up all year long.” And it’s true. Their eyes, like mine, light up when the decorations come back out. That’s not to say we don’t have winter decor all around our house, like my snow village, but the tree, the nativity and the Santas have all been boxed away until next year.

That kinda leaves a fair amount of space that needs some winter life, including a floating shelf in our basement. Last winter, I had a bunch of my favorite winter snow day photos put on canvas.

LT was two years old, and we were about 30 minutes away from losing our power for several days. L2 was an infant, so we packed up and spent some snow days at my parents. This is one of my all time favorite photos.
This was our very first snowman as a family of four.
This is the snowman melting just a few days later. This was a late March snow and it left as quickly as it arrived. I couldn’t find Landon, and I looked out and saw him in the yard, putting the carrot nose back in the snowman. He turned to me and said, “Fix it Momma.” He learned quickly the heartbreak of snow. It brings so much joy, but it doesn’t last forever.
This is a less than exceptional photo of all the canvases together, but you get the idea. I added the snowflake garland too, and you can see below how quickly it was assembled. I love this because this can stay until mid-March.

Last fall, I decided I wanted to get back to sewing. It’s been slow, and I intend to keep it that way because I want to enjoy the projects. This was really fun. I picked up a snowflake punch from Michaels. I used card stock I already had, and I had the boys help me punch snowflakes.

Full disclosure – I made these for the restaurant originally and the boys loved them so much they wanted them for their rooms, and I loved them so much, I wanted to add them to our house when Christmas was over.
I created a pattern and ran the snowflakes right thru my sewing machine. These could be assembled without a machine by using clear tape dots, and thread or fishing line, and taping the snowflakes to the line.

A little bit of snow can go a long way in curing those post-Christmas blues.

I have to laugh, in every snow day photo I have, from the last six winters, LT is in blue, and L2 is in orange. The only thing that has changed is their height.

snow snow day winter decor