Art Therapy

This afternoon, at our new church, we went to a family craft thing where the kids got to make ornaments and the grownups made an Advent wreath. I have some pretty awesome memories about the Advent season from my childhood, including lighting the Advent wreath every evening at dinner. I'm excited about the idea of sharing that with my kids this year.

Now, since I was the primary architect of our Advent wreath, it's important to note that it's a bit wobbly. (And, yes - I know the white Christ candle is missing from the middle of it - the church forgot the white candles so I'll have to add that later.)

We had a funny marriage moment during the creation process that I simply must share. A couple of my purple candles just refused to stand up straight so I decided that the solution would be for someone (enter husband, stage right...) to jam metal spikes up through the base and into my candles so they would stop wiggling. As I explained how I needed him to skewer the candles as I held the wreath up high, I saw a look of confusion cross his face and he said: "We're supposed to push these posts up through the bottom? Where's our model so I can see?" At that point, it was my turn to look confused and I replied: "Model? What model? This is art!"

We both smiled as we realized it was classic us - me trying to figure it out as I go (by the skin of my teeth, if necessary) and him expecting to follow an engineering diagram. As it turned out, he wondered if it might be more effective to "spike" the candles from the top (at which point I agreed that might be a good idea and noted that other folks were stabbing from the top - not the bottom). So he did that and so far, so good. It even survived the car ride home.

Nothing like starting the holidays with a little family teamwork. Not to mention tons and tons of glue and glitter.