They Have a Story to Tell....If We Only Take the Time to Hear It!

Well if you look in at Chez Sluggy, it sure doesn't look much like Christmas is almost here.
The Holidays are only evident in about a 5 square foot area of the house, right around the Christmas tree in the living room.
I visit blog after blog and I see pictures of other people's abodes.
Their abodes are all gussied up for the Holidays, with wreaths, garlands twisting down bannisters, stockings hanging by chimneys, mantels decked out with candles and big, oversized glass ball ornaments or angels, and Christmas Village displays or Train displays or Carolers displays or Nativity displays, and on and on.
I also see multiple trees.....some people have a Christmas tree in every room of the public areas of their homes!
My home?

Not so much.

First, for years now I have sold on eBay around the Holidays.  Selling on eBay, a large inventory of things, sure flavors what your home looks like at the Holidays.  Furniture and decor are replaced by boxes of inventory stacked in every spare corner you can find.  My living room is more warehouse or stockroom than Holiday gathering place.
That dining room table?  It becomes shipping central for 2 months of the year!  There is a festive Holiday tablecloth underneath the bubble wrap, packing tape, yardsticks and scissors and cardboard.  Don't mind the stack of paperwork, bag of wrapping trash and extras on the hutch....

Add in that my kids are pretty much grown now so they are past wanting to help decorate the Christmas tree, much less anything else in the house except the inside of their wallets with Andrew Jackson's faces. lol

Since no one is interested in playing Martha La-De-Freakin'-Da Stewart around here and helping me with transforming Chez Sluggy into Santa's Wonderland, I have stopped trying to do it all and I have stopped beating myself up about the decorating not getting done.

I chose to just have one thing to do in terms of the decorating--the Christmas Tree.
Instead of stressing out over getting it up and finished as quickly as possible, we took a whole long weekend to get the basic tree up and situated.
Then we assigned the branch arranging, the garland stringing and the Star(well, it's an Angel this year)Tree Topper application.  Each person had to complete their part over the course of a weekend...not much pressure there.

Once those things were in place we hauled the 2 large plastic bins of ornaments down and left them for 2 weeks in the living room.  As someone caught the spirit, they could add an ornament whenever they felt the urge.
First thing in the morning before leaving for school......after feeding the dogs.....in between trips down for a nighttime snack or bathroom breaks or World of Warcraft s.
Little by little, day by day, the tree got decorated.
I didn't have to nag.
I didn't have to yell.
I didn't have to push.
I just put the ornies out there and let them choose the time to hang them and how many they felt like hanging.
This method seemed to work well for us this year.
And day by day I watched as the tree filled up.....well, not really filled, since everyone seemed to have a minimalist vision for the tree this year.lol

I envy all those Christmas trees I see in the magazines....all color co-ordinated and/or themed.
So pretty.

But I like my tree because it's a Chronicle of our family.

The ornaments tell a story.

They might not be expensive and matchy but they are a visual history of our lives.
Let me show you around this year's tree......

Hubs and I have collected Ornaments since we became a family back in 1982.  Back them we had very little money so I handmade many of our ornaments or they were gifts from family.

I made and sold at Craft Fairs ornaments like this doll.  It's just a wooden bead painted to look like a head w/a face, a white chenille stem(cut into 3 sections), a yard of pink netting cut into sections and a yard of lace trim.  This is like the ones my mom use to make and sell at my grade school Christmas fundraiser.

Then there are the gifted ornaments like this one....

Yes, I married a die-hard Mets fan.  ;-)

Even before the kids came along, we would buy a Christmas tree ornament every year, usually on our vacation.
Here is a vacation remembrance we  bought this past August in Maine....

A moose in lobsterman waders holding a lobster.  I thought it was cute and pretty much covers the essence of that state.....except there is no snow on it.lol

Once the babies started coming, we continued to buy ornaments, usually to commemorate some interest or milestone in their lives.  I won't bore you with the bazillion Baby's 1st XXX ornaments here.

Instead, here are 2 ornaments 2 of my children received during their younger days.  Here is a rare ornament from my father to my daughter back in the days when she was 'into' Dolls and Dollhouses.....

 And here is a handmade ornament from my mother to #1 son, who was the penultimate Thomas the Tank Engine fan from the age of 14 months until 3 yrs....

My mom had very little money but still found ways to lavish her grandkids with stuff(and love).  One year she found empty Christmas balls and made a themed ornie for each child. #1 son's ornie had a tiny wooden train and cut-outs of Thomas the Tank characters in it.  Even though he is fairly non-sentimental, #1 son will never willingly get rid of this ornament.

Once they started school, the kids started churning out handmade crafty ornaments as art projects that were gifted to us parents at the Holidays.  That's when the number of ornaments here exploded at the hands of my not always talented but very crafty kids. ;-)

 The example above was one of the 1st kid-made ornies we added to the collection.  #1 son made it in Nursery school.  Ok, so his efforts here were to squirt glue onto the ornie and sprinke a glob of glitter onto it and then thread the red yarn through the hole and the teachers cut-out, colored and tied the yarn hanger for him, but we treasure it anyway.

This example was created by #2 son in Kindergarten, the year I was the Homeroom mom.  This is the activity for their Christmas party at school the year he had the old, evil, "W"itch teacher who hated little boys.  (Another very long story for another time.)

Here is one I bought for them about 11 years ago....

Nothing says the Holidays like Pokemon...or at least back then for the kids it did!lol

And here is one of our family traditions....

How else do you explain a pickle hanging on your Christmas tree? lol

There are even some ornaments that are mine on the tree.....

This handpainted blue crab shell was a present I received in a Christmas Swap held with an online group of friends.  The sender was from Maryland.  I thought it was very cool....thanks Nancy!

Here is one of my favorite ornaments....

It's a teeny tiny nativity scene I received as an incentive for selling gift wrap and "stuff" for my school's fundraiser back when I was in 1st grade.  That ornament is 45 years old now.....*groan*.
I just remember how much I wanted it and how much junk I had to sell to get it.  I'm sure my grandparents bought a ton of crap from me so I could get this little 'reward' that probably cost a nickel if you bought it at the dime store.lolol

And this is one of the ultra-rare ornaments from my Hubs childhood.
It's a ceramic angel bell from Germany.  His mother was not a big fan of collecting stuff.  I believe she threw things away unlike my mom who saved everything.  Add in that his parents were dirt poor most of their married lives so what Christmas fippery they had was either glass ornaments that have long since broken or cheap plastic ones that just disappeared over the years as they wore out.

I could go on for pages and pages but I'll stop here.  I so enjoy digging the ornies out each year and reminiscing and retelling the stories of our lives.

How about you?  Do you have any special ornaments that take you back to a time in your life or people in your life you wish were still around?  Leave a comment and share your stories.

Sluggy

Happy Halloween....Are You Ready?

Except for the string of pumpkin shaped lights framing the front porch, this is all we could muster up to greet the Trick-or-Treaters this evening.
My dying potted mums(gee, the purpled ones never even bloomed fully before the cold got them)and 2 'fake' light-up jack o'lanterns.

We are pathetic....

No one got the 'umph' this year to get a real live pumpkin and carve it.  The teens are at the age where they hardly care about this kind of thing anymore....the Daughter has to work and the #2 son just wants the "Halloween Loot"....perferably Twix bars.

But our lack of Halloweenie spirit won't deter all the little and not-so little hobgoblins in our neighborhood from darkening our door as soon as the sun dips below the horizon this year. 
You see, we have a "rep"....as in reputation around here.  We are on the list of "best houses to hit" for Trick-or-Treating.
That's because we give out BIG CANDY!
No little bite-sized pieces of candy or even worse, that generic stuff in the plain wrappers.
We give out full sized candy bars and full packs of gum.  And this year, we also have, for the lucky few, KING SIZED candy bars, thanks to Rite-Aid's candy deals.
We get hit early and hit up often for "loot" and often have to turn out the light because we run out before the parade of kids is done for the night.
I would go broke if I had to pay full retail price for all that candy!
Sigh....What I do to be popular for one night a year....lol

And when I got home from my trip to the farm on Thursday with eight pie pumpkins Hubs started stroking his chin and sizing them up as carving material.  I looked him in his beady eyes and told him these are not decorating gourds, so no one lays a piece of cutlery on these babies unless the end result is to make pie, so back off Michelangelo! 


Here's hoping that only the nice ghouls and goblins surround you this year.
Happy Halloween!

Sluggy

Christmas Decorating or Lack Thereof....

Since our tree still sits nekkid and unadorned I thought I'd share a picture of the Christmas tree from 2008.
I don't even have a good photo of the WHOLE TREE, just this bottom/presents shot. sigh  I am sooo bad about taking photos at holidays....
 
Yes, we are those kind of people who put up a fake tree.  And not only that but it's not even green!
Well, we do have another fake tree that is smaller and green.  It's the older tree we keep as a spare or if some day we get the spirit, we may put up TWO trees.....but don't hold your breath.  This white one I picked up a few years ago for 90% off or something ridiculous like that from KMart in January.
Me pay retail for a tree??
Not on your life!
I'm sure I still have the receipt filed away and could go check on the exact amount spent....but that would involve motivation, and that is something I am pretty low on at the moment.


We have done everything from a live small Norfolk Pine, to a dig-your-own-and-replant-it-in-the-yard-Tree, chop down your own at a tree farm, a cut tree from the corner lot to assorted fake trees.
I love the smell of a fresh cut tree.  But I don't love the cost nowadays, not having a good way to recycle or dispose of it around here or being a 'live tree killer'.  I know trees are grown/harvested and renewable but it sure takes a lot of years to grow a nice one.  A fake tree works fine for us plus there is no mess to clean up from dropped needles and it helps keep the 3 dogs from having ideas about messing with it or 'watering' it...if you know what I mean. ;-)

The kids don't seem to be 'into' decorating the tree anymore so it's hard for me to get enthused enough to do it myself this year.  Hubby is not allowed to decorate the tree, unless he has 'supervision'.  Needless to say, he is not the artistic one in the family.lol

As for other 'decorating' in the house......there usually isn't much.
Besides the tree, some garland on the stair banister and a festive tablecloth, candles and holiday dishes on the dining room table is about the extent of the decorating inside.
Oh, and I put the Christmas tablecloth on the kitchen table too, as you can see in any of my shopping trip photos recently.

I did have a burst of holiday spirit for Thanksgiving however and did this to the sofa table....notice that the sofa table is NOT behind a sofa, but at the bottom of the stairs in the living room...

I had a piece of fall themed knit fabric I draped over the table.  Then I put some candy corn Kisses in the Candy Jar, a candle in the candle holder and drug out a copper dish with holiday decorations with a fall candle and plopped it down on the table.  (The old photo of the kids from 1996!lol, was there already but the Fitz & Floyd Musical Santa was just put out this week for Christmas.)


So are you a Holiday Decorating Fiend in your home or not?
Tell us about your great tips for making your house shine at the Holidays.

Sluggy