Since Christmastime is such a favorite, it is hard for me to understand how Scrooge-ified I have become over the last few years. Maybe it is because I am married to JC and Christmas is not the big she-bang in Spain that it is here. Perhaps it is because that during four of the last five years, we have traveled for Christmas and didn't feel like putting up decorations. Maybe it is because the opportunities for singing at Christmastime are virtually non-existent here, and I am just not getting into the spirit. Or it could be any combination of graduate work, thesis and dissertation-writing, or the fact that we don't have small children around to inspire us. Anyway, We haven't put up a Christmas tree in 5 years, at least. So this year we decided we were going to haul out the tree (fake on top of everything else) and all our old decorations and see what we could do to help ourselves get back on track. I can think of a lot of things that I could have done with the time that it took to move furniture around, put up the tree, find the decorations and get them onto the tree, but we did enjoy talking about the things that we did during Christmases past.
Juan Carlos and I made these the first Christmas we were married. We were living with my parents for a couple of months before they left for Guatemala and we were going to be staying in the house while they were gone. I actually have a picture of us putting the potpourri into the glass balls, but no scanner, so no luck! In my scrapbook I have the picture and pieces of wrapping paper from that first Christmas together, when we wrote each other love notes all over our gifts to each other.
I made these our first Christmas in North Carolina. I am not sure whether we went to Utah to visit that year, but I remember that we were trying to save money so we didn't go too all out for this one. We sat at the kitchen table and JC told me what to put with which flower, (JC is much more artistic than I am and if we disagree on aesthetics, we always go with his decision, since if I decorate it without question always ends up uglier.) and helped me tie them all together.
This year, instead of making ornaments (which, let's face it, we have not a lot of time or talent for), we decided to add to our Christmas village. One thing we have learned living here is that we will probably always need to live near the ocean. So we added a lighthouse this year and a pet store (for obvious reasons but also because it is cute).
Anyway, our tree is a big mess of ornaments but as we said to each other today, at least we have one this year. And we had a great time remembering.
2 comments:
It looks wonderful- and I LOVE the lighthouses! Although it dissapoints me a bit to hear that your plan isn't to move to Logan Ut where there is no ocean. I guess I will just have to come visit you by the ocean instead!
If you think your tree is a chaotic jumble of ornaments, you can just dip into the past a bit more and remember out tree growing up. I was telling Josh there was at least four different kinds of lights, not to meniton the tacky homemade ornaments. Ahhh, but I loved it!
I do remember our tree growing up, extremely tacky, but it did seem to work somehow! Remember the bubble lights?
Post a Comment