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Showing posts from December, 2011

Santa Claus = St. Nicholas?

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Enjoy this lovely image of St. Nicholas from artist Susan Seals, and purchase a print here . A friend of mine posted on a message board wondering what I've heard many Christians (Protestant and Catholic) wonder: how a person can encourage his or her children to believe in Santa Claus, as opposed to St. Nicholas, the Catholic saint. Are they really the same person? First, it must be pointed out that Santa Claus IS St. Nick, at least literally. Santa means "Saint" and "Claus" is an abbreviated form of Nicholas (as in Ni-KLAUS). In our house, Baby Jesus gives the gifts (and hence all requests for toys are addressed to him). We tell our kids the gifts come from Baby Jesus but St. Nicholas delivers them, and St. Nicholas lives in heaven, which is a lot nicer than the North Pole. We let them think what they want about reindeer and elves. With our own children, we don't really encourage them to watch movies that propose to explain the Saint as a secular phenomenon,

Evi Doll Patterns at last!

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Many of you know I'm big fans of the Nova Natural Evi dolls . Two years ago, Nova released their popular all-natural fair-trade dolls in "dressable" form : and I lost no time in buying the "mother" doll (who can pass for a fairy-tale princess in my book!) and outfitting her with a wardrobe. Some of you asked for the patterns I used. It's taken me two years, but at last (Merry Christmas!) I'm posting the patterns I made. If you would like to download the PDF of the pattern book I made of clothes to fit that doll, click here . I believe the clothes would also fit the flower fairy dolls and some of the fairy tale dolls (they would have to go over the existing clothes those dolls wear unless you, like my daughters, cut the clothes off the doll). The six-page book can be printed onto letter-sized paper in black and white. The patterns presuppose a knowledge of sewing and dress construction. So I didn't really include any directions, just the pattern pi