Toyland Salon

In our family it is always a cause for celebration with family and friends and yesterday was no exception. Our town had it’s annual Christmas Parade.

My daughter has a big colonial home on the main street of town and the parade passes right by, so it is a perfect place and a perfect occasion for a family gathering. Not that we needed an excuse. We are a large family and we all live in a small town and spend a lot of time with one another. In fact we can’t seem to do much without the input from each other.As you can see in the above photo, my grandkids have a birds eye view of the parade from their perch on the roof.

My niece Amelia has a hair salon in town and one night , about a month ago, at a family dinner she mentioned that she would like to have a float in the upcoming parade. We all jumped on the bandwagon, so to speak and gave our suggestions and ideas. We do nothing in a quiet and dignified manner in my family, so it was a loud and boisterous few hours of kibitzing, planning, shouting and howling with laughter and we had the whole thing figured out and we were off and running.

So, for the past few weeks it has like a whirlwind with every one including the kids making elf costumes, knitting scarves, crafting giant candy canes, gingerbread boys, all manner of decorations for the “Toyland Salon”.

Here are a few of our happy elves.

The float was constructed in my daughter’s barn several miles from the parade starting site. On the way to the site, 3 of the giant candy canes broke. It was pandemonium, to say the least. Everyone shouting orders, running for tools, trying to get things fixed, to get all the elves dressed and everything else in place. But everything turned out well.

Here's little Amber holding up one of the candy canes.

The weather was cold yesterday so by the end of the parade everyone was ready for some good warm comfort food at my daughter’s house and there was plenty more shouting and laughter rehashing the events of the day. It was all in great fun and Amelia's “Toyland Salon” won The Best Business Float Award.