O Tannenbaum

I have never been one to get really excited about decorating for Christmas.  I do love the holiday season and all that comes with it.  But the thought of hauling out multitudes of plastic bins of decorations to scatter around the house just to put them all back within a few weeks just doesn't appeal to me.

Until I am done.  Then I am glad that I spent the time to decorate.  I should say 'we' because it was a family affair.

Randy is in charge of the lights on the tree and helps with decorating it.

Roxy, who was more curious than helpful, lost interest and took a nap right after we told her that Mickey wasn't for her.

Last year, we put the tree upstairs.  Our downstairs was carpeted last spring, so we decided to put the tree down there this Christmas.  That means sorting through the decorations to decide what goes upstairs and what goes downstairs.

Of course, there is always certain places where certain things belong.

The plastic reindeer that I had since I was a kid always goes right next to the pinecone that I decorated in kindergarten.

My Mickey snow globe ornament always goes in the kitchen.  Emily gave it to me when she was a baby.  It's too heavy for any tree branch and I use some sticky stuff (affectionately called 'boogers' at our house) to make it stand upright.

This poor snowman who lost the lower part of his snowball body sits amongst ornaments that my mom had.  There are bits of the curling ribbon attached to the ornaments that mom used to hang them in our front room window.

I wanted to get a lighted ceramic tree to put upstairs in the living room.  My dad still uses the tree that I made my parents a hundred years ago.  The one that I had made for myself had little mouses hiding in the tree.  It ended up in Ceramic Christmas Tree Heaven many years ago when it was broken beyond repair.

I scored big when I found one on Ebay a couple of months ago.  I love that it has an inscription on the base 'To Sissy and Bob from Elaine and Louann'.  It is just too bad that Elaine and Louann didn't put a date on my new treasure.

I love tinsel on a tree.  It's beautiful.  Tinsel brings back a lot of childhood memories for me.

Of course, I just had to Wikipedia tinsel.  Invented in the early 1600's, tinsel was originally made from shredded silver.  As silver tarnished quickly, other metals were added.  Afforded only by the wealthy, tinsel was used to represent the starry sky over the Nativity.  Eventually, manufacturing improvements made tinsel more affordable.  The drawback of the newer product, which was made from aluminized paper, was it's flammability when put near the hot Christmas lights.  That, and the fact that it also contained lead, lead (huh!) to the current plastic version of tinsel.

I have some tinsel memories ...

... Mom trying to get Debbie and I to put the tinsel on the tree one strand at a time.  That only lasted so long before we were tossing handfuls of the stuff just to be done with it.

... Sitting in the chair nearest the tree watching the tinsel move and reflect the lights on the tree.  I would get in trouble for stretching the tinsel out of shape.

... Oh, and this is a huge memory ... Mom always saved the tinsel from year to year.  She would take it off the tree, lay it flat and wrap it up in newspaper.  One year, she wrapped it up in the comics and I still  can picture Debbie and I sitting on the floor and reading the previous year's funnies.

I do know that next year, I am making sure there is a bit more clearance at the bottom of the tree to be able to water it.  This one is very low to the floor and it isn't a pretty sight to see me try to maneuver myself into position to give it a drink.

I am off to find some tinsel for my tree.

Have the BEST day ever!
~ Dorothy