The earth has tilted back and we are officially on our way towards spring. But before those seed catalogs start rolling in let's take a quick look at some cozy Christmas touches. I used to go all out with the Christmas decorating. In addition to the tree I would put up decorated and lighted garlands and then walked around the house squinting to make sure that each room glowed from every angle. I spent a day or two adjusting timers so that everything came on within a few minutes of each other. I hauled boxes up and down from the attic and in and out from the front porch until it looked like we were moving.
Every room of our house still gets a holiday touch, but somewhere along the line I remembered that back in the day we did not have to have decorations covering every surface to know that Christmas was on its way. All you had to do was close your eyes and breath in the scents of holiday preparation.
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| My grandmother prepping a turkey on the wood stove in the kitchen |
The only decorations my grandmother put up were a tree, a candelabra in the window next to the door and a Nativity. And those didn't come out until about a week before because of the life span of real trees in a wood heated home. You could smell cookies and pumpkin pie, greeting cards lined the doorway and Christmas music played quietly from the old radio in the kitchen. I actually smelled that Christmas smell the other day when I came in from shoveling snow. Our house still smelled of breakfast pancakes and cinnamon from Glögg and molasses from cookies.
And snow has a smell. It really does.
So anyway, here are the decorations that made it up this year.
This is how the table centerpiece turned out. We enjoyed it every suppertime until the tapers were used up. Now I've swapped it out for my single pillar candle which takes a lot less time to light and blow out each time and doesn't risk setting off the smoke detector.
The greens dried up and berries faded, but we had it every meal from Thanksgiving through yesterday when I switched it back to this.
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| On my dresser |
Last year I made a tiny evergreen wreath for the sleigh bells. This year I got out the rings and was going to tackle a tiny rose hip wreath when I decided to go modern with a wreath interpretation instead. I already have a new idea for next year.
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| Side Porch entry |
My husband even has a lighted village gas station on his desk.
Merry Christmas
May your days be merry and bright...
...and may all your Christmases be white.
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