Creating this year's Christmas Card

Stationery card

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So much fun playing with all the possibilities! Never to early to start on Christmas stuff, you know!

Invictus - by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

War Kittie

Having just watched the movie "War Horse" with the family, we got inspired to do our own parody (what can I say in our defense? it's a slow Sunday afternoon??). As most of you know, War Horse is about this remarkable horse that gets separated from his young owner in England when WWI comes around. SPOILER ALERT (ie, stop reading if you haven't seen the movie yet, and intend on doing so): being the miraculous horse that he is, he manages to survive the war and find his way home. While not being the direct cause, it's interesting to notice that apart from his young owner, everyone else who comes in contact with this Thoroughbred for an extended period of time, manages to get killed. END OF SPOILER ALERT.

So, to find the perfect protagonist for our parody we had to search far and wide. Not owning a horse ourselves (not yet, anyway) and since my Great Dane, Odie, is long gone, may he rest in peace, we had to rely on our very own cat, Truman, who, albeit, a bit reluctant, did fit the part marvelously. You can see in the picture that when portraying one of the most traumatic scenes in the movie, where War Kittie gets trapped by barbwire, Truman did the agonizing face quite convincingly. OK, so I have to fess up, I was actually calling it "bobwire" when hubby corrected me. But you can see how I would be easily confused: Bob or Barb, they are both names, so I just thought Bob is the guy who invented that wicked wire, and like scientists who discover a new planet or plant and get it named after them (see, watching PBS always pays off), I thought Bob was the genius behind this contraption. Makes perfect sense, right? I thought so.