It was a dark and spooky night ...

OK, so it really wasn't. It was late afternoon Monday as we walked home from one of the playgrounds near our house, and Laura pointed out the crescent moon. But doesn't it look like it could have been a dark and spooky night?

Merry Christmas!

I'm posting this a few days late -- yay for backdating! -- but didn't want to go without a Christmas message. My new nativity, made in Peru, sums it up nicely:The holiday really should be all about celebrating Jesus' birth. We need to work harder to remember that.
On a less serious note, would the baby Jesus have been frightened by having livestock eyeballing him?

Guide to our Christmas card

Some of you soon will be getting something like this in the mail from us:and as such you might be wondering, "Who are these people, and where in the world were all of these photos taken?" You wouldn't have to ask such questions if I'd included a guide to the photos on the backs of the cards as I originally planned. Since I didn't, here goes (clockwise from upper left):

Kevin, Owen, Zoe and Laura, roof of Milan's Duomo, February 2011
Owen, outside the Pantheon, Rome, November 2011
Zoe, Owen and Laura, in Bergamo's Citta Alta, February 2011
Kevin and Laura, in the Vatican Museum in Vatican City, November 2011
Laura, with the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, London, June 2011
Laura, at Milan's Arco della Pace, September 2011
Laura, on the roof of the Duomo in Florence with the Campanile in the background, February 2011
Laura and Zoe, at the Roman Forum, Rome, November 2011
Kevin, Colosseum, Rome, November 2011
Owen, Milan, November 2011
Laura and Zoe, Bergamo, February 2011
Owen and Laura, Rome, November 2011

I may not do cards next year. Or maybe I'll plan ahead and do tons of cards. Who knows?

In case there was any doubt: Yes, I can be quite an airhead

Remember this little feat of engineering? It got fixed this morning when that pesky air conditioner was replaced with an AC/heater combo unit. It solved the (current) too-cold living room problem and the (summer) air-conditioned floor problem all at once.
The guys who came to change out the unit were nice and professional and easy to understand. They even pretended to understand me (no easy feat with my caveman Italian). One of the embassy maintenance guys came by as they should have been about done and stayed with them after I had to leave the house.
Fast-forward a few hours, and I got home. The house was nice and toasty. Too warm, in fact. I started looking around for the heater's remote. Couldn't find it anywhere. Figured out how to take the front panel off the unit so I could access the emergency operation switches. Found the operation manuals lying in plain sight. But nope, no remote.
So I called Kevin, who went to track down the maintenance guy. Who must have said, "I left the remote in that little holder made specifically for holding the remote. You know, the one on the wall right beside the thing?" And may even have added, "You know your wife is crazy, don't you?"
Yep, Kevin wasn't too thrilled when he called to ask whether I'd checked where the remote should have been all along. He was even less thrilled when I said no, no I hadn't looked there. And yes, yes it was there. Just waiting to be discovered and turn the dang heater off just as it was intended to.
I at least get some points for telling the whole world this story, don't I?

Christmas in Milan

Last year, I posted a photo of lights on Via della Spiga around Christmas. They were part of a big LED festival, and as such they were quirky as well as festive.
This year, Via della Spiga isn't that impressive-looking. Its holiday lights are somewhat understated arches, and during the day it doesn't look like much at all.
But Via Monte Napoleone makes up for it. If I ever have a street to decorate, I think I want to use some big gold baubles like these. It wouldn't hurt for it to be one of the most prestigious shopping streets in the world, either ...

Owen continues his boycott of Santa's lap

This was as close as we got during last night's consulate Christmas party:
I guess his violent objections tired him out, too, because he fell asleep during our 2.5-mile, hour-long walk home. (There was a transit strike, so getting a taxi would have taken longer than walking.)

Lime + black pepper = cookie deliciousness

Last week Deirdre sent me the Los Angeles Times' new cookie recipe book for Kindle. (It's a compilation of recipes from the past few years, including ones readers submitted for contests.) Some of them looked cool but called for ingredients that are hard to get here. But I needed to make something for the consulate cookie exchange and settled upon Lime and Black Pepper Cookies. They turned out great, although I forgot to take a photo until this morning. They also were pretty easy except for the zesting of the limes.
In other cookie-related news, I made Pretzel Chocolate-Chip Cookies, which I came across on Pinterest, for Laura to take to her Girl Scout party yesterday. They turned out quite well, too, even though I used white chocolate chips instead of the peanut butter ones called for.
Mmmm, cookies ...

Just what I always wanted

I'm not sure when it started, but for a long time, I've wanted a Provencal-style tablecloth. When we lived in Colorado, I almost bought one at a cute little store in downtown Littleton. Several times, in fact. But I never did.
Finally I broke down and did Saturday at L'Artigiano, which is one of Milan's largest annual shopping events. I went last year and don't remember why I didn't just buy one then, but it doesn't matter because now I have it. And, thanks to a bit of luck and my and Laura's correct guessing as the saleslady helped us unfurl the thing across the middle of her stall, it actually fits my biggest table.

Foreign Service parade of trees (aka A sort-of reappearance of the FS blog roundup)

So as I was overdecorating my Christmas tree the past few days, I was thinking about all of my friends (Foreign Service and otherwise) who put up their trees the day after Thanksgiving. Or even before Thanksgiving (I'm not naming any names). It occurred to me it might be fun to compile a collection of Foreign Service Christmas tree posts.
I had a similar idea about Thanksgiving posts, but I never was able to pull it off. I'm apparently a little more organized now, though, because here, in living color, is the:

Foreign Service parade of trees

Abuja
Bamako
Beijing (featuring a video of the decorating)
Brasilia
Brussels
Chengdu (I'm having some trouble linking to this one, but scroll down to the Dec. 1 entry)
Ciudad Juarez
Conakry
Cotonou (Love the Mr. Potato Head!)
Dakar
Jerusalem
Luanda
Majuro
Manama
Manila
Milan (yes, this one is mine)
Moscow (here, here and here)
Phnom Penh
South Africa
Tallinn
Tijuana (A must-see post if you've never seen anyone mop a Christmas tree.)
Tunis
Riyadh
Washington, D.C. (D.C. could have its own parade! Check it out here, here, here -- best use of an Oakwood ficus for sure -- here, here and here.)

With something like this, photos really are necessary, and the above links are all to posts with photos. But in Conakry there's a photoless Christmas tree story that deserves a mention as well. Been there, done that is all I can say.

All of the unsolicited blogs included in this post are listed at Life After Jerusalem, but if you're included here and don't want to be, definitely let me know. Also, if you have a Christmas tree photo on a blog somewhere that I've missed, let me know and I'll update. It'd be cool to have a real around-the-world representation on this.

How to overdecorate a Christmas tree

Last year I posted a photo of my Christmas forest, which consists of four trees. But this year I decided to go for the minimalist approach and only use one.
When I put up that one, lonesome tree -- a six-foot Wesley pine purchased for $20 at Walmart in 2009 during our most recent Oakwood stay -- it looked really, really sad. Kevin pointed out that the little labels showing where to insert which branches were visible, and I briefly considered saying the heck with it and buying a bigger, prelighted, 220-volt Christmas tree.
So I did what any self-respecting woman with 72 million boxes of Christmas decorations would do: I poured (almost) everything we have into that one, lonesome little tree.
Hundreds of decorations and 6.5 strands of lights later, we have this:
How does one use 6.5 strands of lights, you might ask. Well, there are seven strands on there because that's all we have. But half of one of those strands won't light, and it's not like I could give up the half that will, so the dead half is wrapped around the bottom of the trunk. I like to think that half would make all the difference in those almost-dark lower branches, but the reality is that I might have gotten just a little carried away with the lights on the top. But just a little.
I actually like it better without the lights on. That way I can tell whether there are any branches yet to be smothered in decorations ...

This could be the beginning of a beautiful collection

Or maybe it will be the only piece of Polish pottery I ever own. Either way, thanks to our friend Cary for giving it to us for Christmas.

Duomo at night

Last night a friend from church and I were out visiting another friend, and we ended up in front of the Duomo waiting for a tram. I've never taken a similar photo because I'm often in bed by the time this was taken. Maybe if I was out past 9 p.m. more often, I'd have more such opportunities.

Behold: My latest project

Remember last year when I said this?
Yeah, I was crazy. But you all already knew that.
So a couple of months ago I ordered some fabric for stockings. This was easier said than done because although Joann.com has a lovely selection, as soon as I would decide on something and try to buy it, it wasn't available.
Finally I decided to just do all four of our stockings the same. (I had been planning to do four different prints, each with a coordinating back, that went together but didn't match per se.) Joann came through with an international-flag-themed Christmas fabric that was perfect for our little globetrotting family. With some input from my sister Laurie, I selected a single backing fabric (a green-and-gold stripe, which I didn't take a photo of) and finally was able to place the order.
So this week I printed a stocking pattern from here (scroll to the bottom of the page to see the link), enlarged it to 150 percent and then redrew it to create a half-inch seam allowance (because the pattern was for a felt project, there was none). I used HeatnBond to stiffen the front and back pieces (they're lined with unbleached muslin), created hangers, and finally finished them all this morning.

You don't have to do a careful comparison to see they're not really the same shape as the original pattern. I blame my less-than-careful sewing and the stiffness of the double layer of HeatnBond. But they still turned about much better than I anticipated.
Plus, I have enough fabric that if we should need more, I can make them without too much of a problem.
No, this isn't an announcement; I'm not planning on having any more children. But if we should change our minds, he/she/they can have stockings that match ours.
I might go ahead and order some more of the fabric just for fun, though. Isn't it lovely?

Maybe I'll make a tree skirt for next year. You know I'm crazy enough to try.