Getting Festive

"as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending" - ee cummings

Something about the falling snow, and the news that the current residents of our post mod home will not be out in time for us to move before Christmas, made me want to decorate. We will celebrate the holiday at Fuller House (opening gifts Saturday so Satch can play before the packers arrive tuesday) and we'll bring on the new year in Hickory Cluster. (Our house is contract with a second buyer in the wings)

We're not quite sure how we want to celebrate Christmas since neither of us are religious nor commercially motivated, yet we want it to be a special and meaningful holiday for our son. A lot of people go overboard with this holiday. Just take a walk around your hood and look at all the displays and it can be hard to discern what it's all about. To quote Soule Papa, "The piece that really get's the boys fired up and me too, I must admit, is a spinning, merry-go-round (really, it spins!) that has a rather eclectic group on board including Santa, Grover of Sesame Street fame, Gumby and of course, Jesus. We've dubbed it the "Jesus-Go-Round". I love it! It's hilarious to explain this type of diversity to the kids. And, kind of represent consumerism at it's ugliest. But you can only rail against the man for so long. This time of year, I let it slide, and dig the mad groove of the Jesus-Go-Round".

This reminded me of a nativity scene I remember back in NYC...someone replaced all the characters with media icons and replaced the baby Jesus with ET. I laughed 'til I cried.

With all this in mind, in between signing papers, getting estimates, planning a move, naps and nums...we cranked the holiday music and while Satch played at my feet I decorated. We decided not to get a tree because it would be tortuous to Satch not to be able to play with the lights and ornaments. Perhaps next year...a small live tree which we can then plant back into the earth. We have a gorgeous set of glass snowflake ornaments from Robert's parents that we look forward to hanging as well as some glass icicles that I bought years ago.

I hung glass gum drop garland across the mantle.












I placed delicate vintage ornaments on our old iron wire tree.


















I removed the tissue paper cherry blossoms (that I made last spring)
from the vase of branches and hung snowflakes.


















A few drops of balsam fir oil in the aromatherapy diffuser...now all I need are some reindeer and the fat man....