Tis the Season

I haven't been doing much in the way of art but I did want to share something I did - I'm pretty proud of it because it was pretty darn difficult, in a fun way. There's a magical little store in Berkeley California called Castle in the Air and they managed to get hold of a huge collection of old French Pellerin paper models, theaters and "Grand Constructions" as they call them.  They sell beautiful reprints for only $15 that you can cut up and construct in good conscience - my Mom bought me an original for Christmas last year and it's safely framed - no scissors are coming near it. I bought the reprint of this one below (they're all 16"x 20"):

And after hours of pondering, and thinking and pondering some more and wishing I could read 1800's French (or that Google could translate it) it now looks like this (please ignore the magnets, it's on my fridge):

There's a long central piece of paper that goes down the back that his head is attached to, and every little moving piece is interconnected and had to be attached together with brads in exactly the right order so that when you move that center piece back and forth, all the other little pieces move as well - I should have taken a little movie of me moving it.  I just love it, and it was so fun to put together.  I started looking through their website at the others they have to do another one and got overwhelmed there are so many and they're all so wonderful,  The link is here if you're interested.

Since what little creative effort I've made recently has primarily been in the decorating department, I thought I'd share a few pictures.  These are chosen basically due to their being the least embarrassing quality photos - I clearly need a better camera if I want to take good indoor photos.

My village:

The center of my dining table

 My little silver tree with vintage ornaments

My mantel

This will be my last post before Christmas as I'm leaving town Friday - I hope you all have a wonderful, safe and magical holiday season.