Deck the Halls

Do your Christmas decorations follow a theme?  Are you colour co-ordinated, or scruffily and happily dusting off years of mis-matched family traditions?  Do you love digging out your shiny treasures from the loft or basement each year, or are you bored to tears with the same-ol', same-ol'?

I split into both camps.   I mean, first out of the cupboard has to be the Santa Cookie Jar.  Essential for every December-related eventuality.


For several years now, I have yearned for a "professional looking" tree - something direct from one of those high-class store window displays.  Mono-coloured, 12 feet tall, smothered in about 8000 lights and simply spectacular.  A really stunning wow-look-at-me tree!

What I actually put up is quite different (she says with mild understatement).  The decorations we have gathered during seventeen years of marriage, twelve of which have included the tastes and artistic offerings of Daughters Number One and Two are kinda fun and juvenile in nature.  Traditional in an "old-fashioned toy" way.  I don't think they are tacky but I accept others might!  But everything we have collected still makes me smile, so it can't all be bad.

Last week at work, we had our Christmas Smorg lunchtime gathering, which included a gift exchange and I was delighted to open up these very cute stockings.  I knew the kids would love them.

And the reason for my delight is that they match some other bits and bobs in our home - like these newly-purchased and deeply stylish quality chair covers (at my husband's insistence would you believe?) and also the tree-skirt.

A recent trip to Costco (I've already documented how dangerous that place is) resulted in the purchase of some cheeky bears.  


Necessary?  Not really.  Fun?  Definitely.  Make me smile?  Certainly.


But this year I have (unilaterally) decided to leave some of our family traditions in a box in the basement - and finally go posh.  Of course, it involved the careful pursuit of some carefully co-ordinated shopping, but I stuck to my guns and worked at it.  You would expect nothing less of me.

Oh, and as an aside, apparently those ball-shaped shiny decorations you hang on a tree are not called baubles in Canada, or not in my workplace anyway.  Who knew?  They all gently took the mickey out of me for calling them baubles.  Is that a very British word?  Here, they are simply balls, ornaments or decorations.  But I like the word baubles.

I now (fanfare please) do have my gorgeous - albeit slightly stunted at only 7 foot tall - colour co-ordinated tree that finally looks like something out of shop window.  Yay!  Lime greens, reds and golds rule the day.  I'm chuffed with the end result and just need another 7900 lights to give the full effect.


And do my girls like it?  Not so much.  They're still trying to work out why the blue cat ornament from Bob The Builder cannot grace the tree this year.

Now then - if this time of year fits into your world, go and finish putting up all your shiny stuff - it's only two weeks away you know.