Decorating for Christmas

I'm one of those "don't decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving" people. I look forward to the Friday after Thanksgiving not for the shopping, but for the decorating. It was a little different this year being in a new house where everything doesn't have an assigned place. Also, with an overly curious 3-year-old and a soon-to-be mobile 6-month-old there were several things that got left in the boxes, such as my Thomas Kinkade snow village and the ceramic nativity set I made in VBS when I was little. It was fun, though, because Emily was very excited and actually helpful when it came to decorating the tree. Of course, all the ornaments ended up on the bottom 3 feet of the tree. :o) I had my back turned when Emily found the stockings in the box.

But Emily's favorite "decoration" was the Fisher Price Little People nativity set she received as a gift two years ago. I highly recommend it for anyone with kids age 2+. She is already correctly recognizing some of the characters. (Last year she called the baby Jesus "Baby Moses".) She also loves pushing the button that plays "Away in the Manager". She sometimes sings along, except she's singing "Happy Birthday Baby Jesus". We'll have to work on that.

The tree is always the biggest decorating challenge, and in some ways the masterpiece. We have a 3-part skinny tree that I leave the lights on. Thankfully, all the strands still worked. I tried to replace one burned out bulb, but soon gave up on that. When we got married I bought all new decorations and prided myself on having a beautiful, color-coordinated tree. In the 5 Christmases since then the cheap Wal-mart decorations have gotten chipped, torn, broken and tattered. Last Christmas was especially brutal. (See posts here and here and here.) So this year I decided to reuse the lights, gold beads and bows and then dig through boxes for random, non-matching ornaments. It was a lot of fun going down memory lane. Here is a tour of our tree in pictures...

My parents gave my sisters & me an ornament every year when we were growing up. I left all the dated ball ornaments in the boxes, but got out the rest. The gold angel below is the ornament I received for my very first Christmas. We received the clear ornament the first Christmas we were married.

This is a stitched stocking from my 2nd Christmas, which was always one of my favorites, along with an angel bell from a childhood Sunday school teacher.

Here are some ornaments Emily has received.

These are ornaments I cross-stitched for a 4-H project when I was in 4th and 5th grade.

We even put up the random, somewhat gaudy, gift ornaments we have received, including the beaded candy cane and icicle from our paper carrier in Denver.

Of course, hanging a new collection of ornaments includes the requisite mess of tangled ornament hooks.

The finished product...not bad!