Stinsons Come for Christmas and Piano Recital!

This year's Christmas piano recital had a nutcracker theme. Below is a picture of the invitation and the program.

I made life easy on myself after the labor-intensive invitations I crafted for the recital last spring, and just created an invitation on the computer and had it printed on heavy card stock at Staples.

 Here's a picture of the venue, the main library has a large room with a grand piano that can be used for free.

 This recital was very special to me because Lissa, Jason, Kiera and Savannah came in to town the day before, and Kiera played the piano in my recital! She played a solo piece of "Favorite Things" from the movie, "The Sound of Music."

Talk about piano teacher Grandma heaven!! 

Kiera and I played a duet of the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." It was soooo much fun!

Before we started Kiera leaned over and said, "I love you."

Just had to put this photo in, showing Kent and Lissa taking pictures on their phones! (Jason must have taken the picture.)

 At the end of the recital I played a jazzy version of "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" while Kent, Kiera and Savannah led the audience with some cup tapping.

It added some fun and variety to the recital.

 A view of the size of the audience; the first recital had more students playing than the second one.

 I divided my students into two recitals, with one starting at 5:30pm and one starting at 6:30pm. The plan was to take a picture of all the students at around 6:15pm after the first recital was over and before the second one started, but not everyone came on time.

Some students didn't come in time to make it into the top picture, so we took another photo. Some of the students are in both the photos.

 Every year I give the students an ornament, and here's the tree with this year's ornaments on it. I printed a picture of a grand piano on to fabric and also printed the year, then put them into small gold frames.

I carried the nutcracker theme through to the refreshment table. The napkins also had nutcrackers on them. It was a very nice evening, made even better because the Stinsons were there to share it with us!