Friday, December 14, 2007

Decorating For Christmas

The past few years at our house in NM I went all out with the decorating thing. Sometime around Thanksgiving I would start dragging all the boxes and super-size plastic totes into the house from the storage shed.. Then I would convince Al to get up on the roof and string colored chasing lights all the way around the edge. We wouldn't turn them on for another week or two. Meanwhile all the indoor decorations would start appearing; the wreathes, all the miniature snowmen,
the village with glass reindeer, baskets of pinecones that smell like cinnamon, the chairback covers that I made along with the matching table runner
, garlands and poinsettias everywhere.
Every room in the house would have some sort of decorations. Outside there would be miles of garland strung on the fence with big red bows and more wreaths. The Blue Spruce and Juniper would get netlights, each year they had grown so much that I had to make a trip to Walmart to try to find more nets that matched (what a great invention those are!)
The two ornamental plum trees would be draped with strings of clear lights, beneath them the herd of lighted moving deer grazed.

Then Al and I would go out to public land to find "the perfect tree". What an adventure!

Sometimes we did good, one year we ended up with a tree that was as big around as it was tall....heeheee!





The tree would get decorated
and the presents would start appearing. My mother always spent lots of time wrapping each gift and they were a work of art. I tried hard to do the same but seemed to fall short.

Christmas would bring my son and his family,


Al's mom and sister,

and anyone else who happened by.
We would deep fry a turkey

and if the weather was decent, take turns riding the ATVs.


Packing it all away was bittersweet.Come January I would always be shocked when the electric bill arrived and I was still finding decorations that hadn't been packed back into the boxes that were already in the storage shed.

Fast forward to this year. Not much room to decorate in an RV. Actually there is room, but no storage for afterward. We have a tree, a little live on I found at Walmart.

I suppose I can plant it someplace next spring, or maybe take the ornaments off and see how long I can keep it alive inside....it doesn't take up much room. As for the outside...see for yourself.

So is this better? Certainly easier. But somehow not so satisfying. I need to work on changing my mindset from the material aspects to the spiritual.

For now.......May The Spirit of Christmas Dwell In All ofYou!!

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