MoseleyWorld

We all know St. Nick has to use his Santa magic to accommodate many different homes and traditions. I posted a request on Facebook for folks to chime in with their family Santa traditions.

The questions? When Santa visits, does he deliver wrapped or unwrapped gifts? How does Santa’s loot compare to presents given to kiddies by Mom & Dad? What goes in the stockings?

I loved reading the responses:

• In our house, unwrapped from Santa… Santa gifts are the bigger ones (bikes, trains etc…)
• Unwrapped from Santa…wrapped from mommy/daddy
• Santa doesn’t wrap.
  As the kids age, Mom & Dad’s gifts supersede Santa’s, thereby giving credit where credit is due.
• Santa gifts came wrapped in our own special paper. All my gifts in one kind and my brothers in another, my mom said she started this when we still couldn’t read so we could distinguish whose was who!
• I never remember presents from my mom and dad, Santa brought it all!
  Santa doesn’t have time to wrap - busy visiting houses all over the world and all. Santa loot - fun stuff. Mom and Dad loot - stuff you need anyway
• We don’t wrap the presents. And I try to only get the gifts we hear them ask Santa for…more from mommy and daddy!
• Santa doesn’t wrap. He doesn’t bring the "best gifts" . He just brings 2 or 3 things plus stocking stuff. Mom and Dad deserve the credit for getting them the most wanted gift. Abbie asked for something very expensive and said Santa could bring it, I had to tell her Santa was on a budget this year.
• Santa didn’t wrap at our house. With 7 yrs. between my Brother and me, he was a BIG kid before he quit playing the game for me. Then for several years Mother would ask me if I wanted gifts from Santa, or just wrap them all under the tree. There was never a penalty for recognizing the truth–just a gradual easing into understanding that Santa was another expression of Parent’s love.

So, what’s your Santa Claus (or Papa Noel, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle) tradition? Click on the link below that says "No Comments" (or 1 comment, etc) to share your tradition.

How many times have you wondered just HOW Santa not only "sees you when you’re sleeping…"  and "knows when you’re awake," but also knows whether you’ve been good or bad? Question no more.

Santa’s Elf on the Shelf has arrived at MoseleyWorld. When we returned from our Thanksgiving trek to Kansas, a tiny little elf was hanging upside down from a dangling balloon in our foyer.

"Uh, mom, what’s that?" Saxon inquired. Carey showed Saxon a book that had magically appeared as well. The Elf on the Shelf book explains one of Santa’s elves arrives around the holidays, usually at Thanksgiving. his sole responsibility is to watch little kids’ behavior and report it to Santa each night by using "Santa magic" to fly to the North Pole.

The book said the first thing to be done is to name the elf. Saxon is great at coming up with pretend names, so we knew this would be a piece o’ cake for her. We liked her second suggestion, Wolfie , lots better than her first, Cha Cha. So Wolfie it is. Oh, there’s one rule: you cannot touch Wolfie, or he will lose his Santa magic.

The next morning, after returning from the NP, Wolfie was being a bit naughty. He took all the silverware out of the drawer and lined it up on the floor and then perched himself on the counter.

Stay tuned for tales (and photos) of Wolfie’s adventures!

Christmas season is upon us. Exactly two weeks until Christmas Day! Are you ready?

Got your holiday card done? Check out Tiny Prints for holiday cards, invitations, custom address labels, and more.

And how long has it been since you’ve had professional portraits made? Look, these don’t have to be stiff, Olin Mills style portraits. Fun, hip. Natural.

Portraits of you you, your little ones, pets, or the whole family make great Christmas presents and we know a great photographer (shameless plug for Chris Moseley Photography) who still has some open portrait session slots and provides super fast turnaround!

Contact Chris to schedule a time to make your holiday portrait at your home (think: in front of the Christmas tree, maybe?), on location or in the studio. We’re offering a 2009 Recession Buster special (starting at $95 for mini portrait creation sessions with free digital image files with minimum portrait purchase) - Email us for details. Check out the Chris Moseley Photography blog to see some family and kids portraits.

For the Parents or Parents to Be: Shop the MoseleyWorld Amazon Store .
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iPods and Accessories Enough said?

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Magazine Subscriptions as low as $5 : Magazines make great gifts, and during December some are as low as $5 after instant discounts including House Beautiful, Smart Money, Cosmo,Marie Claire, Popular Mechanics,Esquire,Town and Country, Veranda,Seventeen, Country Living and more. That’s $0.42 per issue.

Give a Subscription to your local newspaper. Help keep ‘em in business.

Need more ideas? Check out the links below.

A friend told me having two kids wasn’t double the effort, but triple the effort. I think he was being conservative in his assessment. Yes, there are a couple of reasons why the updating of MoseleyWorld has slowed - and their names are Saxon and Samantha. But without Saxon and Samantha, MoseleyWorld would be much less interesting. So, I’ll update with some posts that should have been made a couple of months ago, rather than just skipping over them like they did not exist.

Home Building - Gingerbread Style
My friends at the Rosewood Crescent Hotel hired me to photograph a party right before Christmas. The party was a gingerbread house building class for the wedding & event planners who refer business to the Crescent. As a special treat, I got to take home a ready-to-build gingerbread house along with all the "building materials." Carey, Saxon and I had a great time creating our little cottage.

A wide-eyed Saxon, in her PJ’s, ready to build the house at breakfast.

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sisters. samantha with her baby’s first christmas hat, saxon with her cinderella dress (thanks aunt christy and cousins alex & avery)

Christmas in Wichita
We traveled to Wichita to spend Christmas with Carey’s family. A very special visitor welcomed us to Kansas with open arms. A sinister virus was not simply lurking in the Edison household but aggressively seeing out its next victims with the speed and vengeance of an Ebola virus. Pops was completely missing in action for the first day, missing the big Christmas dinner, which was on Christmas Eve.

Saxon and I walked into the bathroom just in time to see Carey barfing in the trash can. Saxon asked, "Mommy, what are you drinking?" Had I not been so focused on damage control and personal self-preservation of the food I had just eaten, I would have probably laughed so hard at Saxon’s very observant question that I would have wet my pants. We went to a special dinner at one of the log-cabin style lodge houses at Flint Hills Golf Club and although Carey didn’t eat, Saxon again walked in to see mommy vomiting. Almost three months later, we’re still talking about Mommy throwing up at the "wooden house."

saxon putting a bow on her cousin mac

saxon with her cousin avery (yes, that’s a tinkerbell costume - thanks again fassnacht cousins!)

samantha taking it all in on christmas morning

dad and samantha - smiling on the way back to Dallas

Things have been quite crazy, busy around here, to say the least, in the last few weeks. We hope to be able to catch our breath after the Christmas holiday with family. To add to the usual holiday stress, old Santa has been terrorizing Saxon any chance he gets.

We stumbled upon Santa Claus and his elves at the Magnolia Hotel during the downtown Dallas tree-lighting ceremony.Saxon seemed quite content to study St. Nicholas from afar, but as we began to leave, she voiced a request to see him up close & personal.

As the line got shorter, I could hear Santa asking the kids what they wanted for Christmas. I thought, “Holy Rudolph! We have not prepped this child for this moment!” So Carey quickly told Saxon that Santa will ask her what she wanted for Christmas and suggested that Saxon ask for a new dolly. When I suggested to Saxon that she might want to ask for something for Samantha as well, she interrupted me saying “a new blankie for Samantha!” (because what the heck else does a 4 month old really need? and it keeps Samantha away from Saxon’s favorite!)

We walked up the stairs to Santa’s throne (?) and I plopped Saxon down on St. Nick’s lap. She refused to look him in the eye - preferring to keep her eye on Mom & Dad. But I could tell she was watching Santa out of the corner of the eye to make sure the funny looking fella wasn’t going to make any fast moves.

I could tell Santa was ready to punt, so I picked Saxon up and started walking off when she immediately began yelling, “Santa, I want a dolly, I want a dolly, Santa!…and Samantha wants a new blankie, got it? a new blankie, Samantha!”

So, when we got to the car, Saxon looked all sad and said, “where’s my dolly?” Obviously, we get an F in the preparing the kid to meet Santa Claus department. Although Saxon has wanted nothing to do with Santa Claus the other times she’s seen him (the man does get around!), he’s pretty interesting to watch from at  least 10 or 12 feet away.

Here’s the official 2008 Moseley Christmas (yes, it says, Merry Christmas!) card. This year, we went with a “wide format” card that opened up from the right side (vs the standard foldover type card).  We had fun photographing our pretty little girls for the card.

front of card

inside left of card

inside right of card

back of card

The 2008 edition features somewhat of a final farewell, a tribute, to Ranger, who died earlier this year.  Unboxing the Christmas decorations and finding Ranger’s personalized stocking (sorry about the treat we left in the stocking last year, buddy!) and seeing several canine-themed ornaments brought the kind of grief sorrow I realize many people experience every holiday season.We still miss him terribly, but pledge to remember the good times the little “devil in a clown’s suit” brought us. Merry Christmas little guy.