Christmas Time: Decoration Adventures
Welcome, dear friends, to this years Christmas series! It is very gloomily raining outside and not feeling very Christmasy at all, but we’ll make the best of it, as you do in Western PA, where it could snow on Thanksgiving and rain on Christmas and then Snow on Easter, just because. It really is very wet outside, though. Ah well. My tree is up and I just had to plug it in, because it’s so pretty and at least one thing is festive.
A quick word on the series this year. Last year I did Christmas Memories. The thing about memories, though, is they are the same year after year. They don’t change, they just expand. So this year I’ll be focusing on the present Christmas and how we’re celebrating this year in our first real house with our cats and everything. I’m pretty excited about it, not going to lie. There’s just something really cool about celebrating in our own house, unlimited by the restrictions of an apartment.
I will admit, I’m not usually so into decorating for Christmas, but this year I was super excited to get started. I wouldn’t mind doing the outside of our house, too, but that requires a ladder, which we don’t have, and lights that we don’t have and some way of putting them up, which we don’t have and it’s all a lot of work for what would probably just be a line across the roof and maybe lights around the door and windows perhaps. My husband wouldn’t be into, I don’t think, so it’d be me on my own, probably dragging my dad down to help me. Maybe we’ll give it a go next year when I have some more experience with the whole house thing.
I think the bit of snow we had before Thanksgiving helped jump start my Christmas spirit. I was so ready to start decorating as soon as appropriately possible. Still, one has to wait until after Thanksgiving to start any such Christmas activities. It’s very important to contain Christmas to it’s allotted time frame. Just like Black Friday should only be that Friday, unless it’s online. Online you can do whatever you want, it’s not dragging people away from their families on Thanksgiving day. But I digress. Monday came and my sister came down to help me out with my decorating. I’m glad that my little Pearly cat wasn’t sick and hasn’t been sick since Sunday and we were able to do the whole thing without rushing to the vet.
My tree lives in the basement. I would really like to try getting a real live Christmas tree some year, but this year I will settle for a pine scented candle and a fake tree. I have learned that apparently I can’t keep my ornaments in the basement as the container doesn’t seal completely and moisture got in and molded up the box with my Keyblades in it, tarnishing the Kingdom Key. That sounds like gibberish to most of you, but that’s okay. Just find a Kingdom Hearts fan and have them translate. Fortunately most of my stuff came out mostly unscathed, if smelling a little basementy.
Our tree has an accidental theme. When I was growing up, I always got an angel ornament every year. It turned into Willow Tree angels at some point in my teens because I thought they were the coolest. So the vast majority of my ornaments are angels and, of course, I wanted to take them all with me when I moved out. So our tree is angel themed with a few owls hanging around and Superman and R2-D2 thrown in there so my husband has some representation. He didn’t grow up getting ornaments every year and thus did not come with a giant box full of them. I think I will start the tradition so that he can have more ornaments on the tree. I know he doesn’t particularly care, but I think it would be nice for our tree to be more evenly representative of us.
The first year we were married I decided I wanted more than just angel decorations on our tree. I acquired a set of silver bulbs and a set of purple bulbs to add some consistent coloration to our tree. It’s super hard to evenly distribute them, let me tell you. No matter where you put them there will always be like three purple bulbs right next to each other and three silver ones in a row and there is no way to pattern them otherwise. I have accepted this fact about tree decoration. We waited to long to get started on tree things the first year and thus my tree topper selection was not what it could have been. I wanted an angel instead of a star, partially because a star is another thing to plug in and partially because I just like angels. I couldn’t find a silver one, or a doll like one, much to my husband’s relief. I ended up with an abstract angel made of wires and ribbon. I like her quite well, actually. She is gold, however, and does not actually match the silver decorations, but that’s okay.
In hind sight, I should have gotten gold tinsel. That would have tied her in better, but I didn’t. I got silver tinsel last year to enhance my tree’s festiveness. I think I just really like the idea of the classic Christmas tree trappings. I like the image of the standard orb ornaments and the tinsel and the angel on top. My tree did not turn out so timeless as it could, but it is perfect for me. It has those touches now, but it is also covered in the ornaments my mom gave me all through my childhood. It has the little cross stitched ornaments my aunt Vicki made us each year. It has our two first Christmas ornaments, one from each mom, and my puffy owl friends from the past couple years. It’s my perfect tree and I love it.
And that’s my decoration adventure for the year. We don’t really have many more decorations other than my tinsel bowl. I fill a large wooden bowl with red tinsel and put plastic silver ornaments in it to sit festively on the coffee table. My cats have only tried to eat it once thus far. They also chewed on the tree a little bit, but they haven’t bothered the ornaments, so I’ll take it. I did get mistletoe to hang up somewhere, I just have to get around to doing that. I’m thinking a command-strip hook is the way to go for that one. Probably over the kitchen doorway. That’s where it always was at my parents place. Maybe I’ll look into getting more decorations for the house. Maybe we’ll get some stockings to hang by the fire, since we have one of those now. We can see how long it takes the kittens to rip them down. I know this has gone a bit long, so I’ll leave you now to do your own decorating! Share your fun decoration stories in the comments, if you like, and have a lovely Christmas season, my friends!
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