I made some of our Christmas decorations out of paper this year.
These little houses have flickering candles (LED ones) inside, so they look like a glowing little village.
You can't tell that this one has colorful stained glass windows unless you take the candle out, though.
I also made wreaths from white printer paper. I think they look sort of classical.
Which is why I hung them over our wall of Greek poetry.
Around this time of year, some people in Tallahassee go out into the woods, find some bunches of mistletoe growing in the top branches of the live oaks, get out their shotguns, and shoot it down. I really wanted to collect some mistletoe this way! But I don't have a shotgun.
So instead I made some mistletoe out of felt, an idea I found on Pinterest.
I hung it over the kitchen door.
It works just as well as the real stuff. 
This is what I did with all of the narwhals I cut out of card stock: brushed them with glue and covered them in glitter.
And more glitter.
I made silver, blue, and dark gray glittery narwhals.
Then I hung them around the living room.
I might add lights later to bring out the sparkle, which the camera doesn't capture very well.
But now we have lots of narwhals frolicking around our living room, and it's starting to look very festive and nautical.
So maybe it's because I've been eating these cough drops, or because David and I are reading this book out loud.
Or because I've been wearing this awesome necklace that Jennifer and John gave me for Christmas.
But this season I am feeling very inspired by icy winter seas.
And narwhals. Narwhals seem very Christmasy to me, maybe because of this one in the movie Elf. 
I'm dreaming of a kayak trip like this one, except that obviously I would be helping to conserve the endangered narwhal instead of harpooning it. Meanwhile, I want to decorate our place so that it looks like a glacial sea festooned with pods and pods of narwhals.
We're going to need more narwhals.
Yesterday I gave a baby shower for John and Jennifer, who are expecting their first child in January.
I had this song stuck in my head the whole time I was getting ready for the party.
While I was stringing birds onto the chandelier, for example.
And while I was pasting more birds onto gift bags.
Jennifer's sister-in-law Erin also went with the bird theme when she made this fantastic cake.
All the guests arrived, and a few deer posed in front of the windows as if on cue.
Jennifer and John opened lots of presents.
Then we took the food to the kitchen, covered the table in plastic, and got out fabric paints and markers.
And everyone decorated onesies for the baby.
The week before Christmas was a flurry of secret activities. Presents had to be wrapped.
Some had to be packaged up carefully.
And shipped off to friends and family. Most of them went to the right people.
Cookies and chocolate bark had to be made.
And I tried making caramels for the first time. They are topped with gray sea salt.
I did lots of my favorite crafts, baking and beading.
But I also tried some new things this year. I made some things out of felt, for instance, and I painted these totebags with fabric paint.
I learned how to cut stencils from freezer paper.
The whole Handmade Pledge thing turned out to be a lot of fun.
And it's nice to have the secrets finally revealed so that I can post about them! 
The Indiana State Museum is very strange and very beautiful, like Indiana.
After reading about the Subversive Knitting exhibit here and here, I had to see it for myself.
It was incredible.
My favorite work in the exhibit was this one: layers and layers of paper lace made of words. I stood in front of it speechless with amazement, trying to read in every direction at once. It was mind-blowing.
Then we went to the exhibit on Indiana's biodiversity ...
... which was simultaneously cute ...
... and creepy.
Even when we walked outside for a while along the canal, the day was still sort of surreal.
Jennifer petted this bee.
John was almost eaten by a mastodon.
And we ended the day at a 3D movie.
