Purple and Silver

These are the Emperor's two favorite colors. When we were taking stock of our Christmas tree ornaments this year, two things occurred to us: many of our breakable ornaments have broken, and they now sell glass looking plastic ornaments (and they are cheap {and so are we}).

Two other things occurred to me privately: this was the Emperor's 40th Christmas, and we'd never done a purple Christmas tree. So, when I saw the gigantic bin of purple and silver at Target, I went a little wild.

Here you see the result! We also used our old white and silver ornaments and the applesauce ornaments we made this year.

Have you made applesauce ornaments? You just dump all your old cooking spices in a bowl (I'm thinking cinnamon and allspice more than, say, curry powder and Italian seasoning) and add enough applesauce to get it to stick together. Roll it out (1/4" worked for us) and use cookie cutters to cut them out. We also rolled them into candy cane shapes. Don't forget to make a hole to put a hanger through later (we used a straw). Bake on low until dry (2 hours?), maybe flipping them after an hour. Your house will smell fantastic! The ornaments can be painted and so forth. One year we pressed glitter on them before we baked them, and that was very nice (and easy).

Of course, being brown, you don't notice them on the tree, except for the lovely smell. Mmmmm. Pine and cinnamon!

In other news, the parakeets are stealing Baby Jesus' hay. I must apologize to Oob - I thought he was the one taking the hay. The kids put in a bit of hay whenever they do a good deed (a symbol of making a soft bed for Jesus by getting their hearts ready).

The parakeets are also having a marvelous time playing with the stuffed Nativity we made a few years ago. They land on the pieces (which makes them fall over) and then they pick at the loose threads and roll the pieces around until they (and the parakeets) fall off the finch cage.