One of the natural elements found in Colonial Williamsburg Christmas decorating are oranges studded with cloves. This is an extremely easy activity to do with children and the uses of the oranges are numerous. They can be formed into a topiary, placed in a bowl, suspended from ribbons, incorporated into wreaths, etc, etc, etc.  I had one small container of whole cloves that we used to decorate about 5 oranges. This is an estimated usage of cloves, because the amount required is dependent on the amount of cloves used in the design. 

     When the children were younger, I simply supplied them with oranges and cloves and let them create any design they wished. The stem of the clove is stiff enough to merely poke into the orange wherever desired.

     This year, I showed the kids lovely clove designs in oranges in my book, Christmas Decorations from Williamsburg.  They oohed and ahhed over the lovely designs, but in the end, they still prefered to create their own designs. I, however, am not that clever, so I tried to recreate different patterns from the book.  I quickly came to appreciate the decorator's ability to keep everything symmetrical.  Symmetry was an important design consideration in the 18th century. Mine are not as symmetrical as they should be.  However they turn out, they smell terrific!

     This year I decided to incorporate them into our advent candle display. We all decided this is our favorite arrangement of our advent candles ever. 

     Today was a busy day.  We are spending the mornings catching up and tying up loose ends in school. Then the afternoon plan is working on the Colonial Williamsburg gingerbread village, baking, cooking, wrapping up Christmas correspondence and playing in the snow!  Since the recent snow storm kept me out of the stores last weekend, my husband took me shopping after a late lunch for the leftover misc items I needed for the holidays, while the kids stayed home. My son finished making the new sled of the day after they added the next layer to the gingerbread village.  We are learning for success, to do the houses in stages and let the royal icing thoroughly set. We finally got home around 4pm, when it was already getting dark. 

     My husband refused to play in the snow with us, but the kids were elated I wanted to play with them. I never had a chance to play like this, when I was growing up! I didn't take very good pictures of the sledding.  Here is my son's new sled, a combination of a plastic storage lide on top of cardboard, wrapped in a garbage bag, secured with packaging tape, running from front to back.  We were prepared to use Pam if needed, as recommended by some friends!

Here is my daughter going down.

     Then it was my turn. Weeee-uh ooh!  I slid down lickety split, did a major spin, flipped and crashed into a soft pile of snow quite a ways down. Um, no need for Pam! That sled is dangerous! My son says we need to smooth out the track because it has become extremely bumpy. We asked my husband, the Northerner, how to do that, but he has not ventured a single tip. Can anyone tell us what to do????

     For my own safety (and my doctors' relief), I quit the sledding and let the kids show me the caves.  Here is the one cave...

     My son had to crawl into it. Hmmmm, since I have no snow gear to keep me warm and dry, I don't think I'll crawl in, especially at night when it's colder. 

     Then I decided I'd take Christmas pictures of the house in the snow. 

      I can't decide which one I like better.  It was difficult to get the perfect composition.  I like angle shots better than straight on with the van in front. So now I have one of the neighbor's car, still snowed in. 

     I liked this one even better, until I downloaded it and saw the sparse tree hiding the house. Hmmmmmm.......

   We put our Christmas decorating budget into the Colonial Williamsburg Christmas candles for the windows this year. Next year we want to get wreaths for each of the windows.  Hmmm, wonder if we'll find enough on sale after the holidays?

     Stay tuned for the next sled run on a hopefully smoother track, snow angels, snow man and igloo building! We've got to make the most of all this snow! 

     This morning I woke up to sunshine! My breath was taken away by the grandeur of the glistening scenery! 

Our neighbors' car got snowed in...

In the picture I posted yesterday morning, you could barely see the ha-ha wall across the street. It couldn't be seen at all today.

This looks like a 4th of July in snow. 

I was impressed that the snow plows came in early in the morning...

After gathering sledding tips from ladies on my history yahoo group and a friend from Colonial Williamsburg, my husband, who used to sled all the time in upstate New York growing up, finally decided to do more than tell us we needed a real sled.  I guess everyone's creativeness, and boy am I surprised at how creative everyone is, decided to get in the act. His solution?  A piece of linoleum he found in the basement closet.  Hmmmm, no one mentioned linoleum but it sounds great! He drilled holes in the front to tie rope into and we had  an extremely flexible sled. While I prepared meals and did some baking, I told the family I wanted a break to sled too. The kids were excited about that.  My son said the best time would be when they nail the success of the sled. The day before he and my daughter weren't very successful with sledding. 

   Later I looked out the window and found my daughter actually sledding down the hill.  I went out to join them and they immediately put me on the sled.  This was my very first sled ride in my entire life! First I stood on the linoleum and went slipping and sliding. They told me to straddle it.  Remember I have lived my entire life first in Louisiana, then Hawaii, then Texas, before we moved here last spring.   I finally got onto the sled, I had the rope ready and my husband pushed me down the hill. Weeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!! That was fun! No one took my picture.

    I did take a picture of my son who went slowly down the hill...

and didn't get very far. So far I'm in the lead for speed and distance! 

Apparently my husband hasn't had much success sledding downhill, so this time he laid on his belly and propelled himself forward. My son said he looked like a penguin. Well, he's disqualified...he used self-propulsion to sled down the hill. I'm still in the lead!

 My daughter did pretty well getting started and went quite quickly, but didn't get as far as I did. I'm the winner for round one! My daughter came in second!

This time my son took pictures of me going down super fast... 

w-a-y down the hill.  Can anyone beat that? I went several times and no one ever went further or faster than I did!  Imagine that! Where's the gold medal?

My daughter should get a medal for most creative. She has no idea how she did it, but she spun into a 180 degree turn and went the rest of the way backwards!

Then the snowball fights began.  No one was able to hit anyone, except me. I was able to hit my son!  That was safe, because he knows no one is allowed to hit me with a snowball, doctors orders. My eye doctor and head surgeon would be angry if they knew I was in a snowball fight. My husband kept forgetting that so I told him it would cost him hefty medical bills if he hit me in the wrong place, so he stopped. I went inside to let them snow fight.  As much fun as it sounds, I'm not willing to risk hospitalization for that type of fun.  Eventually they made caves. I'll check those out tomorrow! 

     Unfortunately, the linoleum has met its demise.  It ripped in half. How could they do that?  It was perfect for my personal world record!  This evening my son started brainstorming from all the ideas I got from the ladies yesterday. He actually found a huge piece of cardboard from somewhere. He started cutting it down and shaping it and doing something with packaging tape, perhaps foam core board and maybe a garbage bag.  Stay tuned!

Update:  My husband insisted on the importance of shoveling snow. He spent about 2 hours this morning shoveling the front walk, driveway and deck when it was 9" deep and furiously snowing. The weathermen said that technically we were under a blizzard warning.  When he finally came in, I couldn't tell that he had done any shoveling.

The kids took awhile getting dressed for snow, because they have nothing to wear to stay warm and dry for snow!  So they put on lots of layers and my son wore my husband's extra boots. 

 I had wanted to get sleds for the kids for Christmas so I was going to shop for them today. With impending snow,  I tried getting some yesterday but they are all sold out.   So they tried a lid to a plastic storage box. When I went out to check on them they showed me that they had trouble...they sunk in the snow. Oh, I forgot to tell them to pack it down.  So my daughter sat on the lid and he tried to pull her down the hill to pack down the snow. Umpf! They were going nowhere.

Look at all that snow.  If you go all the way down, the creek is down there. My daughter was worried before the snow that they'd sled right down to the creek and land in the water.  I told her not to worry about that and I think that now she understands that won't be a problem.

They are still trying to work with that sled.  I was cold and snow kept blowing into my eyes so I went in.  It was fun working on wrapping gifts and baking while looking out all of our windows.

  Eventually the kids came in to change, I threw their wet stuff in the dryer and they had cocoa.  After lunch they ventured out again. We had brainstormed ideas for packing the snow. My son said he'd stomp on top of the lid to pack down the snow. When I watched them through the window, he was dragging his sister on the snow shovel.  Then they tried with the lid again, with my son sitting on it and my daughter pulling it, but no go. They tried the plastic tub but that wasn't working either. My son said he needed a lip on the lid so it won't get stuck in the snow. All covered in snow, he asked me to get some foam core board from our last unit celebration and duct tape so he could tape it to the lid and have a "real sled."    Later when they came in, my daughter told me they figured out that my son does best sitting on the shovel and my daughter does best on the lid.  I guess they made some snow angels today too.  Now they are talking about making 3 snowcaves tomorrow.

     Meanwhile my husband decided to shovel more snow in the afternoon. He measured that it was 18" deep! We have already more than doubled the old snow record for the Washington DC area in December and the snow was still falling furiously. 

    Stay tuned!         

Posted earlier this morning: 

Wow, this is incredible!  My son is going to take measurements and send them to the Washington DC weather station 8. Last night he measured 2" after two hours of snowfall.  One of the weathermen called this an "Old Fashioned Snowfall." Hey, he knows how to speak to my heart!  I guess he's right, though. The weatherman said we are halfway through this historic event. We are already reaching depths of snow that top the top 5 December snowfall accumulations, none of which are in my lifetime...until now!  There appears to be a foot of snow on the ground now! I just saw a cardinal in the tree outback but I couldnt get a clear picture of him. The crazy thing is that the Blueridge Mountains to our west are getting less than us and those on the coastline to our east are getting more snow than us. This weather is coming from the south and east of us. In Texas we got our winter weather from the Rockies, although moisture from the gulf gave us moisture for our snow opportunities.

The view from our family room into our neighbor's backyard...

From our family room looking at our property line...

from our family room looking at our deck...

From our kitchen looking at our deck. Where are those crazy squirrels?...

From my kitchen sink to the railing where the squirrel usually sunbathes.

From my kitchen sink to the common property beside our house...

From our dining room to the common property beside our house and the street in front of our house.

From the dining room looking in the other direction down our proposed sledding hill...

The front yard from the front door...

 Stay tuned! We're only halfway through this snow event! It continues to snow heavily now.

     We are under a Winter Advisory here in Northern Virginia, expecting 10" of snow this weekend.  Wow! Really? I've been in scant snow before in Texas, one morning I actually woke up to over a foot of snow in central Texas, and I've landed in an airplane to lots of snow in Jackson Hole, WY, and we followed a snowstorm into Virginia when we moved here last March (thankfully we drove in sunshine) but I have never seen it snow much. The kids and I haven't experienced a major snowfall before. My son said the snow had started and was taking pictures.  Hmmmm, I yawned, "Here a snow flake there a snow flake." He insisted there was much more than the Texas variety. I finally got up to look and wow!  This is about one hour after it started!!!  The kids and I can't believe it!  What is morning going to look like? My husband, the New  Yorker, is taking it all in stride and laughing at us.

Here's the view from our front door...

And this is from our backdoor...

Stay tuned for more pictures this weekend!