Christmas Decorating

Dear Santa,  can I please have a new digital camera so I can take some decent pictures?  I promise to be a much better blogger if I get one.  Well anyways.  I've spent most of my day today hanging stockings and decorating our little tree while listening to the Pandora rockabilly Christmas station.  This is the first year in way too long that we have had a proper tree.  By proper, I mean not the tiny little ceramic tree that my mother made in the mid 70's.

This has been my only tree at Christmas for the past 6 years.  I love it very much and every year send my Mom a picture of me decorating it or of it all decorated with the rest of my very small collection of Christmas stuff around it.  This year as I was going through the one small plastic tote of Christmas stuff I have and I realized that almost all of the things I have were hand made by family members or given to me by family members.  I may not have much, but I'm glad to see that what I do have has meaning.

Honestly, in the past I have been incredibly un-thrilled by these things that have been given to me.  I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I did not appreciate these gifts at the time.  I felt they were some sort of cop out.  Why would you give me something that only gets used for 1 month a year?  Is this the only thing in the store that you felt I would like?  Even the hand made things I didn't appreciate,  how many plastic canvas tree ornaments do I need?  Especially when I don't even have a proper tree?  Oh, I can't believe that I'm admitting this.  I'm so sorry Aunty Merry and Aunty Peggy, I was such a rude girl.  But this year, and I suspect that every year for the rest of my life, I am thankful.  I appreciate!  I love my hand made ornaments hanging on this years tree.  I love the silly little nik-nak's of squirrels, bears and Santa's sitting on my windowsill.  They make me happy and remind me of the family who gave them to me and all the wonderful Christmases that we have shared.  Thank you for making my holiday brighter. 

As I said, this year I have a tree.  Our downstairs neighbor is out of town for the winter and mentioned earlier that his Christmas tree was in the attic and if we wished, we could use it.  I dug it out yesterday and discovered that although the lights on it didn't work, it was covered in the cutest little wooden ornaments.

Aren't these just the cutest?  I don't know their story, but they look vintage and I'm in love with them.

I think these 2 are my favorites.  I feared that the wooden ornaments and the small hand full of ornaments I already had wouldn't be enough to cover the tree so in the true sense of  'make do and mend' I made some little bows for the tree out of ribbon that I saved from last year that had been wrapped around a present I received.  (This is exactly the sort of reason I save such things, you never know when it'll come in handy)

On a tree that is only 4 feet tall, that's all it took to decorate.  I couldn't fit anything else on it if I tried.  Except that I was still missing a topper.  I have no angel or star.  What I did have is more ribbon.  Last year I bought some ribbon after Christmas when it was something like 70% off.  I'm sure glad I did as that ribbon is now my tree topper (pictured above). 

 

Seriously, why is it so damn hard to take a picture of a tree?  I couldn't get a single shot of the whole thing that didn't look like I had dropped the camera in mid action. Ugh, I digress.  The tree makes me happy, even if the pictures of it don't.  I remember years ago decorating a very large tree on a budget.  It was filled with bows of all kinds of ribbon.  I don't remember where I heard it, but I had heard that the first Christmas trees were decorated with ribbons and bows.  Each ribbon tied in a bow was meant to represent our Christmas wishes and dreams.  I'm not sure if it's true or not (maybe I just made it up when my daughter asked why we had bows instead of normal ornaments) but it's a nice thought.  As I placed each bow on the tree, I though about this years wishes and how they've changed over the years.  Although I could fill up 10 trees with bows for all the material things that I'd like to have, my wishes, this year, are not for material possessions.  This year I wish for good health, healing and peace for my friends and family.  Not that I wouldn't use the hell out of a new camera *hint hint* Santa.

 

So, your favorite Christmas decorations, are they hand made or store bought?  Do they have a story or are they just so pretty that they make you smile? 

 

XOXO,

Cherry