Culture Trip

Today Dan and I went to the Pasadena Museum of California Art. They have some interesting exhibitions that are showing until January 6, 2008.

In the Main Gallery was Beyond Ultraman: Seven artists explore the vinyl frontier. This was a collaboration with the Los Angeles Toy, Doll, and Amusements Museum and featured the works of seven contemporary artists. The collection consisted of vinyl and plush toys as well as drawings, paintings, and photographs. There was even a small section on vintage vinyl toys.

In the Side Gallery was California Colors: Benjamin Chambers Brown. There was a lovely collection of California landscapes painted in an impressionist style.

In the Project Room was an installation by Susan Silton titled Inside Out. It was set up like a store with various striped items for sale. It was very colorful!

The Back Gallery had an exhibit on an artist named Jess. The collection consisted mainly of collages with drawings and paintings in various mediums. We didn't spend much time in there as the light was dim so it was hard to read the descriptions of the artworks.

We purchased the books for the Beyond Ultraman and the California Colors exhibits, a LATDA t-shirt, and Spider Baby Boom figure. The figures are in boxes so you don't know which figure is in the box until you open it. The one we got is in the second photo at the top. His name is Softyboom.

Happy Holidays!

Hope everyone has a good Christmas!

Cookies!

We made cookies this weekend, sugar and ginger. The sugar cookies have been decorated with red and green sugar sprinkles. Dan got a little artsy with the candle cookies! The ginger cookies have been decorated with brightly colored butter cream frosting and a variety of sprinkles and candies.

Holiday Cookies First Day Covers, Part 2

Here are two more FDCs I made for the 2005 Holiday Cookies postage stamps. I could have kept making the stars but decided six different designs were enough. This is also the first appearance of Walf on a first day cover.

Holiday Cookies First Day Covers

Here are some FDCs I made for the 2005 Holiday Cookies postage stamps. They were created with Illustrator. I had fun designing these from memories of the cookies we used to make for Christmas. There are two more stamps in this series that I made FDCs for and I will post those later as well.

Santa Trolls

These were given to me by Dan in 1991. I don't have many opportunities to wear them but they sure are fun to look at!

The Tree

This is our tree with most of our ornaments on it. It's been eight years since we last had a tree so it was a lot of fun taking the ornaments out of the storage boxes. We hadn't seen most of them for years. A lot of them were given to us by others over the years. We have some that have been given to us by our parents that are quite old and bring back memories of Christmases past. We have managed to accumulate so many ornaments that we have enough to decorate another tree. Maybe next year we'll get two!

Vintage Tree Topper

This is a recent eBay purchase. We will get a tree this weekend so we can display the topper and all of the decorations that have been in storage.

Shepherds Christmas Card

This is card that was sent to my family around 1974 or 1975. It's from an original painting by P. Bassett Chaarir. The inside message is:

Warmest wishes for a Merry Christmasand a Happy New Year.

The card is printed on a textured card stock to simulate brush strokes.

It's December

Time to start thinking about Christmas.


This is a card I received in 1969 or 1970. Very cute!


Here is the inside of the card. I love the activity (even though I never got around to doing it).

I will be posting more holiday items through December. Enjoy!