belated, but true

well, it's a few weeks past christmas, so this post may seem out of place, being that we are whooping it up in the new year and all. today, january 6th, is however the epiphany, a day on the christian calendar which celebrates the revelation of God in human form to our messy, broken world in the form of little baby jesus. the epiphany traditionally commemorates the wise men coming to visit jesus. so, we may have passed january 1st, but according to the church calendar, this is the perfect day to post this entry.

this year i gocco-ed our christmas cards, which was a fun multi-evening event fueled by lots of episodes of arrested development on hulu and hot tea. i picked the word joy for our card, mostly in part because as many of you know, it has been a rough year for our family, and i have hopes for more joy in the coming year. one of the things that is easy to forget at christmas is that regardless of whether you follow the teachings of jesus or just know the christmas story in a cultural way, that baby jesus' birth is a story of hope and joy. jesus, this scrawny little screaming infant is literally born into crap, as an oppressed people group in an occupied land, with no money and no power, essentially homeless and without a family of much significance. and somehow this little child is good news to weary, forgotten people. 

i think we've all experienced the reality that sometimes joy comes in the places you least expect it. the slight change on the calendar that moved us from last year to this has done nothing to alter any of the circumstances in my life. but i don't know how radically the external circumstances of the shepherds or magi changed once they met this little jewish child, and yet they walked away from meeting him as changed people. so my hopes are for more joy this year - joy in my circumstances, relationships, neighborhood, family, artmaking, faith, and maybe even my blog. maybe life won't change that much in 2009, but perhaps my perspective of it can.

the first run of printing just the text.
i ended up doing multiple screens; i think it was 5 different runs of printing the cards total: one for the envelopes, one for the text, two screens for the two images of snowflake and a final one on the back of the card with our christmas greeting.
a bunch of envelopes printed and labeled and drying.
another printing run of snowflakes.
ahhhh- envelopes still drying. i cranked up the heat so they'd dry faster; you can't move on to print the next color until the last one is completely dry.
cards all done and ready to sign and shoot off in the mail!
a bunch of finished cards ready to head out into the world. i accidentally lost half a page of labels somewhere, and i don't know which page it was, so a good 15 or so people did not get their cards this year. oops! if it was you, wishing you joy in the virtual realm. here's our christmas photo below. i set up quite the contraption to take i self-timed picture. my camera was precariously set atop a stick which was arranged very carefully on an overturned flower pot which was sitting (a little wobbly-like) on top of our barbecue out in the backyard.

{wishing you, me and all of us more joy in this new year}