I never start my Christmas decorating until after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is such a wonderful, commerce-free holiday (marred only by that awful Black Friday thing) that I hate to crowd it out with anything Christmasy. But the following weekend, all the boxes start inching their way upstairs, in spite of my best intentions to not put EVERYTHING out this year– because after all, I’m the one who has to take EVERYTHING down in the end. But every year it’s the same. I just can’t seem to help myself.

This is the mantel in my living room

First, I always do the mantel, and it’s something different every year. Snowmen, sparkly villages, candy ornaments and garlands– I’ve got a million collections I can build themes around. But my house is decorated in yellows and oranges, and since the classic red and green look pretty awful next to those colors, I decided to do the living room and dining room in gold, silver, yellow and orange.

Here's the chandelier above the dining room table, just before the office holiday party

It’s still shiny and festive, yet doesn’t make me want to gag every time I look at it. All the red and green stuff, including the big tree, will go in our dark brown, cozy den, where we spend all our time anyway.

If I could get away with not putting up the big tree, I would. I love all my little table top trees and would put them in every room in the house if I had the energy.

Mikayla's horse tree

Mikayla has this little horse tree in her room, and I made this tiny robot tree for my son, Will. He keeps it in his office.

Will's robot tree

Here’s our kind of pitiful little office tree:

One year, in the rush of getting work done on time, we forgot to decorate for Christmas at the office. We pulled out this kind of ugly silver tree and quickly made ornaments out of office supplies for it during lunch. I LOVED it! I wish I knew what happened to all those clever creations. Lost in the last (and I do mean LAST) move, I suppose.

This tree is decorated entirely in the hand-made ornaments my children have made over the years

So while the big tree is still not up, it’s officially Christmas here at our house and at the studio. I hope you’re feeling jolly by now, too!

Merry Christmas!

~Mary

Okay, first things first. Check this out:

How cool is that!? Michelle Obama is pictured here reading my version of ‘the Night Before Christmas’ to patients at the Children’s National Medical Center this past Monday. This made our Christmas even merrier here at the studios! And it’s already a fairly merry place, so that’s really saying something.

I also thought I’d show you some new Christmas designs I’ve come up with. Usually I’m working on Christmas in July, a year and a half before the drawings see the light of day, but every once in a while I get to work on them during the actual season. I think those are the ones that turn out especially well because I’m actually in the mood for Christmas! These are for Christmas 2011 so they won’t be out until next year, but you can see all the new stuff we have available this year on our website.

What do you think? Any favorites?

~Mary

All drawings featured in this post are copyrighted by ME Ink and may not be used without expressed written permission.

I’m going to be on a local news show on Friday called News 11 from 4pm-5pm on KPLR channel 11, and I’m going to be on and off for the full hour, joining the charming host, Patrick Clark. I’ll be doing a little drawing and a lot of chatting, so if you’re in the neighborhood, tune in. I don’t actually like to draw in front of people because for me at least, drawing is 80% thinking , 5% actually drawing, and at LEAST 15% erasing until you get it right. I’m sure it would be incredibly boring to watch but we’ll just be doing a few fun sketches, so how bad can it be??? Thank goodness Patrick will be propping me up throughout, so I’m looking forward to it. We’ll try to show you some of it on this website for all you out-of-towners, so check back over the weekend. I’m off to start putting on my TV makeup now, so I’ll be ready for public viewing by Friday afternoon.

~Mary

I thought you’d like to see some photos of our almost finished space at the St. Louis Childrens’ Hospital Christmas Tree event. Our tree and all its’ little accoutrements are the first thing you see when you walk into the room. I think it turned out beautifully, thanks to Kathy and James who worked like dogs to get this all together– including James building and painting the entire fence from scratch to surround the space perfectly. I especially enjoyed the working toy train that circles the entire display. The auction was Tuesday night and it went off without a hitch. We had a lot of fun and I’m so happy to have been able to help raise money for this wonderful hospital. If you’d like to check it out, the trees will be on display and open to the public from Friday until Sunday evening at the St. Louis Science Center. If you live near St. Louis, be sure to come and take a look– there are more than 75 trees and every one of them is beautiful! Many were sponsored by individuals and families to give to some of the young patients in the hospital, decorated with all that particular child’s favorite things.

It was a wonderful and happy event and we are proud to be a part of it! Enjoy the pics!

~Mary

Stephanie and I have been furiously painting red and white ornaments for a Christmas tree that we’re doing for St. Louis Children’s Hospital, which will be displayed– along with tons of other fabulous trees– starting next week at the St. Louis Science Center. There will be an auction, and if you win ours you get not only the decorated tree but 7 other smaller, white-lighted trees, a big backdrop based on the pages of my The Night Before Christmas book, 3 elves decorating the tree, little mice from Katherine’s Collection sledding and building snowmen, and 2 red Adirondack chairs filled with (empty but cute) packages and some signed copies of my books (including my newest book, Fairy Tales!).  Obviously we’re assuming a company will bid on it for their lobby, unless you’d like to empty out your living room and set it up there. You might want to, though,  because the amazing Kathy Curotto , from the late, great HC Magazine , is styling the whole shebang.

Nothing like frenzied, last-minute painting on a immoveable deadline to get you into that holiday spirit…

~Mary

Do you remember a while back when I showed you a pencil sketch of the book I was working on then—“Mary Engelbreit’s Nutcracker?” Just to refresh your memory, here it is again:

Click to enlarge

… And here’s a picture of it now:

Click to enlarge

Yes, we are FINALLY finishing up the Nutcracker, for release next Christmas in 2011. It takes a village to produce a children’s book, at least the way we do it. I drew all the pictures and designed the layout, (with my art director, Stephanie Barken’s help). My crack staff of artists, Pam, Wende and Casey, helped me color it, especially when I was in the hospital– as usual, great timing on my part– and Alexa and Angel were our support team, scanning, printing and doing what needed to be done on the computer. Whew! A year to do all the designing and illustration and now it goes to our publisher, Harper Collins, to put it all together, and another year to WAIT for it to come out. Frustrating!! But at least it gives us time to start all the licensing that we hope will go along with the book: toys, ornaments, music boxes, etc. Our hope is that a major retailer will pick it up as their in-store holiday decoration for next year– wouldn’t that be great??

The work that goes into something like this is sometimes overwhelming but always fun. And of course, while we’re doing the book I’m also working on the new calendar and lots of new cards. Okay, the fun part sometimes gets harder to define, BUT there is a light at the end of the tunnel! The hideous deadlines are almost over and I and my art crew are going to take a week , maybe two, and design new programs and products JUST FOR FUN! Obviously, the goal is to have licensees and retailers pick these designs up and run with them, but it will really be a relief to design exactly what we want to see out in the marketplace without any direction or deadline from anyone else. Let the art party begin! And when we’re through, I’ll show you some of what we came up with. I bet you’ll be able to see the energy and excitement that comes from our “sky-is-the-limit” week.

By the way, thank you all so much for your well-wishes and prayers. They must’ve WORKED, because I’m fine now! So, again, thank you.

~Mary

Don’t miss Matthew Meads newest magazine, Holiday with Matthew Mead, available only on his website.

I have a Christmas craft project in it, along with lots of other artists I know you love, like Charlotte Lyons of housewrenstudio.com and Layla Palmer of theletteredcottage.com and many more. Matthew has worked his magic again and I know you’ll want to check it out and start planning your holiday fun!

I also have a craft project (I told you I was keeping busy while lounging in my craft/sick bed!) in Amy Powers’ eZine, Inspired Ideas, at inspireco.com. Many of your favorite artists and craft people in this one, too. Sigh… so much Christmas…  so little time…..

~Mary

There’s a wonderful event here in St. Louis called Wings In The City that benefits the art therapy program for critically ill kids and their families at Barnes Jewish Childrens’ hospital. They asked artists from all over the city to paint and/or adorn these huge butterflies, that will then be placed at different places all over St. Louis next spring. But last Saturday they had the first unveiling of all the butterflies together in one place and it was beautiful!

Here’s our butterfly

And here are several more

Amazing…This butterfly is decorated with thousands of small photos of children.

To see all of them, you can visit the gallery on the Wing’s in the City website– and be sure to check out all of the other great butterfly things you can get and ways you can help out sick children and their families too while you’re there!

~Mary

You’re not going to believe this, but I had to GO BACK IN THE HOSPITAL right after I wrote the last blog. Taken in an ambulance by your standard, incredibly good-looking EMT guys– what is that about? Is that part of the job description? “Must be handsome and unfailingly kind, to assist in wretched womans’ recovery, or at least make her forget how bad she feels for 15 minutes, till she gets to the hospital”. Anyhoo, I’m home again, with my own handsome and unfailingly kind husband, feeling much, MUCH better. Still stuck in bed, though. I’ve never been very good at that patience thing, but I’m using the time to learn how to use paper clay and to do a little embroidery. I’ve been very inspired by my friend, Charlotte’s, darling projects on her website and also by the cute things featured in Amy’s new Inspired Ideas. We’ve never had a TV in the bedroom, so I’ve turned our bed into a portable craft room. The glue, the glitter, the crumbly clay, the little elephant-shaped humidifier and half-empty boxes of tissue—-now, THAT’S romance, people.

I’ve never watched daytime TV and don’t plan to start now. That’s right– I’ve gone my entire adult life without seeing a single episode of Oprah, and have lived to tell the tale. I do read the news on my many electronic devices, however. Usually I glance at awful and terrifying things like stories about alien Jersey Shore people and scary, scary housewives from various cities and people who have no business having children at all having WAY too many of them, and think, well, surely this is a passing trend– people simply cannot keep up this level of stupidity forever. But then I read the REAL news and realize that stupidity is sliding ever closer to reality. And then I think, “Hey, I’m sick. I have blood pressure to keep down. Must. Turn. Off. News.” So I spent yesterday teaching Mikayla how to embroider. It’s poor Phil’s birthday today, so we’re scrambling to put something together, because it kind of got lost in the hospital shuffle. Mikayla decided to make this for him.

It was her very first time and she learned 5 different stitches and finished in an hour! I was very impressed! Here’s the sampler I’ve been working on, just for something to do.

I find it very relaxing, to do something just for the fun of it, with no deadline or expectation (my own) of perfection. I thought I would be going crazy by now, not being able to work or run around, but so far, so good. Embroider a little, sleep. Take a shower, sleep. Watch Glee, sleep.

….I give it another week.

P.S. Thank you all for the well-wishes! It really means a lot– and gives me something to read while I’m stuck here!

~Mary

ell, life is full of surprises and curve balls and a couple of direct lobs to the head. Since the last blog I suddenly became very sick again with a weird form of pneumonia and was in the hospital for 9 days. I just came home tethered to an oxygen tank and have to stay in bed for several more weeks recovering. I won’t bore you with the details, just that they think they have discovered what is causing this and I will completely recover and never be sick again a day in my life. OK, I made that last part up, but I plan to live a healthy and virtuous life from here on out and do everything I’m told so it won’t happen again.

As I’m sure many of you know, when you’re sick like that, you have lots of time to think deep thoughts and try and decide how you want to spend the rest of your life. What’s really important, what really matters, etc. I’ve already been through the worst life has to offer with the death of my son, and I already know the most important things in life are, quite simply, family, friends, and love–period– but there’s always room for more reflection. I think I’ve been trying to do too much lately; trying to be all things to all people. When you run your own business, you sometimes feel like you just can’t say no to any opportunity. I’ve often said that’s how I got my business started, and its true– I grabbed every opportunity as it came along, whether or not I even fully understood what I was getting into, and it certainly worked for me. And although it’s hard for someone like me to give up ALL her aspirations of World Domination, ala Martha Stewart– I just don’t think I need to try to do everything anymore.

One of the things that I’ve decided I can’t do this year is the Home Companion Workshop. It was so much fun, but there are now so many of these events and the economy is still not great. It’s a stress and an organizational nightmare I just can’t handle this year. Barbara and I are still talking about doing maybe three or four seasonal 1-day craft seminars at the studio– we’ll let you know if that works out. Does that sound interesting to any of you? Obviously it would be a much smaller, more intimate deal, but it could be a lot of fun. Otherwise, I’d be more interested at this time in my life to participate in already existing events and leave the logistics to someone else!

Also, there are so many great new e-zines out there now– Amy Powers’ Inspired Ideas, Sweet Paul, Matthew Mead’s new bookazine (I’m in his new Holiday issue, available through his website)– and of course, we’ve thought of again putting out The Home Companion that way, but there are so many new people coming along and putting out great new ideas on the Internet. I think it’s time to say Home Companion had its’ moment in the sun and now it’s time to let the new kids show their stuff. I’ve decided to stick with what I do best– draw, draw, draw, and then license the heck out of those drawings and try to create things that make people happy.

I think if I hadn’t become sick I never would have come to this decision. It would have seemed to me like I was letting people down or not “being all I could be”, but now I have a fresh perspective on things. We’re none of us getting any younger, bucket lists have to be revised, and as Robert Frost said “Everything I know of the world can be summed up in three words: life goes on.”

And P.S. let’s hear it for the guy who invented the portable oxygen tank! Thanks buddy!

~Mary