After a super busy weekend filled with rehearsals and the TONS of music we did for Advent I and Advent Procession, “The Great ‘O’ Antiphons,” (plus Thanksgiving thrown in there), this week has no extra rehearsals or concerts and is somewhat of a relief. I say only, somewhat, because I finally got around to doing the mountain of laundry which was piling up around our house. Also there is the weekly bulletin to type, and I have also worked on the church’s Christmas ad for the newspaper, something I’ve done for years and years (I don’t know WHY or HOW I got this responsibility!) At least this year there’s only one daily newspaper (Star-Advertiser) and only one ad to create. In years past, I had to design two separate ads, one for the Honolulu Advertiser and one for the Star-Bulletin, because they used different column widths!

Another project I’ve worked on are three postcards for Christmas, New Year’s and the January 15th and 16th Vivaldi “Four Seasons” concerts. I guess it’s been about three or four years now, that we have mailed out a color postcard to promote our musical events. We found that it actually is cheaper to do a color postcard (printed on the mainland) than to print a black and white flyer locally. In fact, when I wasn’t able to get the Advent Procession postcard printed in time, and we had to go with a black-and-white flyer on blue paper, it cost nearly as much as 1000 color postcards! Ouch!

We’ve received only positive comments on the color postcards, and I understand  the cards themselves have become collector’s items! They can easily be posted on the home refrigerator without taking up a lot of space, and for me, they’ve become an outlet for my artistic design interests. For many years now, we have printed our Christmas programs with a color cover, and have used Renaissance or Baroque paintings of the nativity for the front. Carl is always asking me, “well, what graphic are we going to use this year?” I guess next year it won’t be an issue.

So, here’s a sneak peek at this year’s Christmas postcard. The painting is Pieter the Younger Brueghel’s “The Holy Family with St. John.”