Holiday Greetings!

Since Christmas is just a few days away, I thought I would bring you holiday greetings with a question.

Do you send out Christmas cards?  Or to be more generic, do you send out holiday greeting cards?  According to Goggle AI, the tradition of sending out Christmas cards started in England in 1843 and in the US in the 1870s.

For me, it wasn’t until I retired in 2017 that I felt like I had the time to send out Christmas cards.  Of course, my first task was collecting addresses of friends and family to whom I wanted to send them.  Then using an address label template, I entered those addresses so I could print them out each year on self-adhesive labels (I appreciate everyone who hand addresses their envelopes, but my handwriting is so bad, I figured the post office personnel would groan when I dropped mine in the mail slot and many of them might never make it to their intended recipients).

After receiving custom made Christmas cards for several years, I decided that I should make our own.  I started that process in 2019 and I have done it each year since.  And each time, I try to come up with a unique design.

I have written before that my wife and I got married in 1979 three days before Christmas, so in 2019 the year we were celebrating our 40^th wedding anniversary, I let the theme be a wedding pose then and now.

In another year, I used a Christmas tree from our first apartment and one over 40 years later.

In other years, I included family photos that were taken throughout the year or on a previous holiday.

But this year I did something completely different—I drove down my 1/12^th scale road to visit a miniature house.

In some of the miniature model magazines and e-mails I get, I have always enjoyed seeing doll houses decked out for the holidays with snowy scenes and decorative twinkling lights.  Then one year, I discovered how one person created a snow scene—using coarse salt.  Inspired, I ordered some lights and bought some salt.

When I was trying to create a miniature scene with my Craftsman style home, I realized the biggest need was for a backdrop to hide everything behind the doll house in the full-scale world.  I explored a number of ideas, some of them quite costly until I had another one of those ah ha moments.  I’d make my own.

Using butcher paper my wife bought for the grandkids upon which to paint or draw, I taped several pieces to the wall and painted my own wintry sky scene.  I am not really an artist so I did the best I could (you may have to use your imagination a little (or a lot) here).  I then put the lights on my doll house and added holiday miniatures that I had purchased.  I then put it on a table and spread out the snow (salt).

I tried several different lighting scenarios but, in the end, decided this one was the best.

Using this photo, I created the front of our 2025 card.

Next year, I will probably return to the full-scale world for my inspiration but until then, I wanted to wish everyone a very, Merry Miniature Christmas!