O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree

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Christmas movies, Christmas songs, decorations, postaday2014

I love the song O Christmas tree; it starts the holiday season for me and it is one of the Christmas songs that run through my head while I decorate our tree every year. I also love the Christmas song taken up by Alvin and the Chipmunks and I was actually singing Alvin’s part while I was decorating this time, our son heard me and this prompted him to tell me that we needed to watch all of our Christmas movies; The Year without a Santa, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Santa Claus us Coming to Town and quite a few more.

Dusting off the Christmas decorations

Tags

Christmas, decorations, lights, postaday2014

Our son was wonderful and brought down the four storage bins that houses all of our Christmas decorations. I always enjoy going through the bins, remembering when we got this decoration or that ornament. Many of these have a long history and have followed us through many moves. On the other hand there will come the usual battle with the Christmas lights, which ones work and if a string doesn’t work, which bulb to change or fuse or both; I never have the patience to do it and I have a lot of patience; I am convinced that the string light manufacturer’s purposefully manufacture built in obsolescence into their product, no matter how many fuses and extra bulbs they throw in the box.

Daily prompt: Roy G Biv

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colors, decorations, Hermes, postaday2014

Write about anything you’d like, but make sure that all seven colors of the rainbow — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet — make an appearance in the post, either through word of image.

I think that my Christmas tree, once completely decorated, had all of the colors of the rainbow represented somewhere, I know that I had ornaments that were red, yellow, green, blue and purple, I am not too sure on the orange or indigo though. I had an eclectic melange of decorations; wooden figures, cloth ornaments, colored ribbons, wired ribbons, fragile balls and crystal figurines.

As the month of December progressed, my inbox was deluged on a daily basis with offers from every single retailer imaginable, full of sales and hints as to the perfect Christmas present just an online purchase away. I am sure that every single person reading my words had the same experience. Now aside from the holidays, one of my favorite French design house has always been the house of Hermes. To be quite honest, the name is what attracted me in the first place, Hermes, he is the Greek God of messengers and mischief, also God of thieves and vagabonds, also that of the con man. One of my favorite stories regarding Hermes is how he outwitted his big brother Apollo and then won his affection by creating the first lyre for him and giving it to him as a gift. Zeus who was proud of both of his sons, was especially impressed by Hermes wily nature and while welcoming him with a place on Mount Olympus made him the winged messenger of the Gods. There are so many stories with Hermes, all the Gods loved him for he was eternally good-natured and playful.

But Hermes the store doesn’t have anything to do with Greek Mythology, their heritage is equestrian and they evolved into leather goods, luggage, handbags and accessories, they then branched out into world famous exquisite scarfs and that is what I am going to show you to celebrate the rest of the colors in the rainbow.

On my iPad, I have the Hermes silk Knot app and I look at it every once in a while just to admire the brilliant designs, the talent behind these colors, composition and fabric inspirations is wondrous. I can only imagine what it would be like to work in the atelier at Hermes, fingering the silk, the twill and deciding what design would work with which color, what strand of silk or twill would best compliment the image in the artist’s mind. That would be a beautiful day indeed, spending hours or days in the atelier in Paris, happy days for me.

Christmas decorating, sort of done

Tags

Christmas, decorations, postaday2013

The hubby and I decided that today was the day for decorating since Mother Nature was going to send us a lot of snow this weekend and there was nothing better to do. Jack is funny because he really doesn’t like it when I spend most of the day going up and down the stairs and then spend the rest of the time on my feet, he feels deprived of his lap. As I sit and write this post, he is laying half on my lap and now he is content.

Now Jack is off my lap because he heard his Papa in rattling around in the kitchen and that might mean food. He has two loves; food and my lap and once food is done, then my lap is back on his agenda.

The tree is up and decorated, after I had put all the lights up on the tree, they are brand new strands and the new fangled led lights to boot, I plugged them in and one strand is a different kind of clear light, it looks sort of yellow compared to the other three strands. My hubby and I both noticed it before I put the rest of the decorations, if I had taken the offending strand out it would have left a gaping hole so I left it. Now that the tree is decorated, it doesn’t bother me. However there is a glaring difference in the picture, oh well.

The stair bannister is decorated with garland and lights and my work is done, except for the Christmas cards that I am going to write this evening.

Christmas is coming up faster and faster and I am a little bit more ready today than I was yesterday, hooray!

When to dismantle Christmas?

Tags

Christmas, decorations, dreary, January, postaday2013

The question is relative to each and everyone. My answer to the question is of a varied type; January is such a dreary month, long and cold and pretty much a let down after the buildup of all of the holiday festivities, so getting rid of all the decorations seems like a lot of work for not very good results. However, that being said I am finding myself eyeing the other homes waiting to see who is taking the initiative first. I sort of don’t want to be the first to say good bye to the holiday cheer. We might also have a visitor this weekend so I would like to keep the cheer going for a little while longer.

I think that I will put off taking down the decorations until next week when it is closer to Martin Luther King Jr’s Day. I’m pretty sure that I will be quite ready to accept the new year clean and tidy and decoration free.

Moving in slow motion

Tags

attic, clean up, decorating, decorations, holidays, postaday2012

It is traditionally the weekend after Thanksgiving that the Christmas decorations make their way down from the attic. We have 4 very large storage bins,; chock filled with our artificial tree that stands eight feet tall, the lights, the ornaments and the various Christmas knick knacks that I decorate with in the entire house. These precious keepsakes have been accumulated over the course of our marriage, twenty two years worth of ornaments and various Santa’s and snowmen, quite a collection I have to say.

Today I have been operating in slow motion, we all went up to the attic together. Normally I do it alone, but my hubby took it upon himself to get the baby girl’s help, he could see that I was a little run down. I wonder what could have tipped him off? Perhaps the painful ulcer on my bottom corner lip, my cold sore. I am not prone to these outbreaks on a regular basis, they only happen during the cold months and when I am over tired, so imagine my joy when I woke up Friday morning with the throbbing pain of a cold sore. I know that in a short time it will go away on its own, so that isn’t a big deal, I am just dying to pick at it and it is taking all of my discipline to not pick at it. I am a little obsessive/compulsive with scabs, I pick and pick. Funny, as I was taking a break from assembling the tree and walking Jack, I was thinking that I was looking forward to getting a camera so that I can show off my new haircut, but then I was thinking I could wait a few more days so that my sore could heal ( vanity) but enough with my disfigurement.

The tree isn’t done, I put up two strings of light and then sat down, put up two more strings of light and then sat back down, so all the lights are up. I am slowly getting the ornaments up, but I am calling it a day for decorating. I’ll get back to it on Wednesday. Why Wednesday? Tomorrow I am spending all day writing to finish my NaNoWriMo challenge, the game plan is at least 10,000 words. Tuesday will be another day for the writing challenge and then hopefully fini. Wish me luck!