MORE CHRISTMAS - LOOK WHAT THOSE BEARS ARE DOING!!

At our house at christmas time - we have to watch out for our teddy bears - they seem to get into mischief without much trying.


Don dresses them all up each christmas - in their Santa hats. It makes them think that they are the main focus at christmas and they want to be involved in everything. They are sitting on the stairs going up to the attic in that drafty old farmhouse (previous blog).


They like to ride on the sled, and take along their horn and some snacks - just in case they get hungry - and bears get hungry quite often. And you never know when you'll need a good French Horn.

They like to hlep decorate - and there is a frog on the floor reading a cookie cook book - deciding on the kinds of christmas cookies that they want to eat. Seems they have decided on one batch of every cookie in the book. There is coffee and a coffee cup on the little table and someone is putting some holiday music on to add to the festivities.

I love to decorate with teddy bear items - and I found this cute little door hanger in WV when we went back there our son's wedding in December 2005. His future mother-in-law and I had a grand time shopping before the wedding - she knows all the good spots, and prices in WV were so much cheaper than WA prices, so we had a blast.

More teddy bears - these are wooden and I painted them many years ago in my tole painting phase. I have always had a sheltered porch to hang them on where ever we've lived - but in this new house I don't have a place like that (the sheltered area of the porch is too small) so I will have to find another place to hang them indoors. I also shrunk this pattern and made ornaments of the same design.

Here are all the bears - posing for a family portrait one Christmas in CA. Don has never been one to take photos but one day he asked me how to use my camera - a pentax with zoom lens (before we had digital cameras) - he said he wanted to take some pictures around town. So I gave him a quick lesson - thinking he didn't really want to learn how to take pictures - and off to work I went. That night he asked me how to get the film out of the camera - I was surprised and asked if he had taken a whole roll of pictures already (36 photos). He took the film out and I forgot all about it. On christmas day this photo, framed , was the last present I opened. It had to wait until last because the black bear on the top right and the small pink bear in the middle of the back were gifts that year - and I would have seen them in the photo if I opened it before I opened my bear portrait. He did a great job - and said he had quite a time picking the best photo - what with the sun dodging in and out of the clouds and the bears acting silly.

Don tells a funny story about this. He lined up all the bears on the front porch of our house, on boxes and wagons and chairs so all could be seen. We lived in a small town of 1200 and we lived right in the center of town, across from the small post office, so everyone in town went past our house every day to get their mail. One man stopped his car and got out and said "I have to see this". Several friends dropped by while he was taking the roll of pictures - he wanted to make sure he got a good shot and no one was frowning or fooling around in the picture! He told everyone that stopped by that they had to keep this a secret - and that was going to be hard, because we knew everyone in town and someone was bound to blab - even if it was by acccident.
No one did blab - and I was totally surprised when I opened the package that christmas.

Here is a new bear that has come to live with us since that picture - from a dear friend in FL - she lived in NY at the time. She sends new sweaters from time to time and the grandsons love to change her sweaters for the seasons.

She is wearing her new "Let it Snow" sweater - sitting next to some dish towels I received as a gift two years ago. She thought it was a tablecloth for a picnic -silly bear.

Hope your christmas is full of fun and bears - and every good thing.