Decorations 2013

It's that time of year again. Each day, another house in the neighbourhood puts up decorations. An assortment of snowmen, reindeer, Santas and festive lights has appeared in the past week. The neighbourhood decorating is still incomplete, though, for when I look out my window at night there are no decorations present. I expect this to change in the coming days.

As with last year, my family and I have not put up our decorations just yet. We'll most likely start that process next week. The vast majority of our decorations will be indoors but I think we will be putting up a couple of lights outside, too.

Down go the decorations

Our decorations for Christmas 2012 have now been put away for the year. Over the morning and part of the afternoon the lights came down, the baubles on the staircases were removed and our two trees were stripped of all their festive garments. Only one object remains: an angel:

It's a similar situation to last year when I left my snowman out. The snowman was re-united with his fellow Christmas decorations this time, but somehow this angel was missed and I'll have to keep her safe in my room all year as a result!

The decorated tin

Remember the bauble-covered tin from last year's Christmas decorations? The tin is back, this time with a new theme:

Mum decorated the tin this time; my "decoration" using the above golden ribbons looked more like a bizarre bird's next than an actual decoration.

Decorations 2012

The Christmas decorations are becoming more noticeable in my town. A few days ago only a handful of houses were decorated; now it's hard to look at a group of houses without seeing at least one of them dressed for the season. Lights, Santas, reindeer and snowmen are becoming more common each day.

My family and I have not yet put up any of our decorations, but I think we'll start the process next week. With the exception of some new light sets that my parents have purchased I don't anticipate this year's decorations being much different from 2011's.

My daily decoration

I promise that this will be my last Christmas decoration-related post for a while! Anyway, soon after I wrote this post and this one, it occurred to me that I do have a Christmas decoration out all year: a snow globe.

For as long as I have had this globe (going back years, although my family owned it back when we were living in California), it has never been put away (barring moves). I have always had it either on a shelf, a bookcase, or a window ledge. In fact, the only time it was put away for a significant amount of time was, not surprisingly, when it was packed for the move to the United Kingdom.

One could say that it is difficult to put a snow globe away because of their fragility, but with some practise, packing one can be easy and storage/moving damage to the globe can be avoided. This globe has been out for such a long period of time that it is no longer a Christmas decoration, but rather, an item that belongs in my room. I am fond of my snow globe, although it is battered in parts and I am worried about it breaking.

The snowman left over

Not long after I wrote yesterday's post about all the decorations being put away...I discovered that one had been left out! When putting my own decorations away I had accidentally left one on my bed rather than packing it in my bag of Christmas items: my ceramic snowman was the one remaining out.

The box with all the decorations in has been taped and put away, so it would be a waste to get it out again just for one snowman. Fortunately, I do have a safe place for my ceramic snowman for the year, and he will be reunited with his fellow Christmas decorations when Christmas 2012 comes around. In the meantime, here is a picture of him:

Downing the decorations

We removed and packed away all our decorations today, and it took us less than a hour and a half to do it. My brother removed the staircase baubles in less than half an hour, the two trees were stripped of their garments in only a couple of minutes, and even the lights were easy to put away. Normally it takes as long to put decorations away as it does to put them up, but this year I was surprised at just how fast we got the job done. Maybe we were better organised this year than we have been in the past, or perhaps because the house was easy to decorate it was equally easy to take said decorations back down.

It does feel different now that the decorations are away again for now, as it truly signifies the end of the Christmas season, but I will get over it very quickly. After all, as odd as it initially feels when decorations are packed, I would feel stranger if they were still up in the summer.

Last year's decorations

It was a year ago tomorrow that my brother, mother, and myself were putting up decorations in my grandparents house. Our decorating of their house was the first time we had ever put up decorations in somebody elses' home: it did feel strange doing it, but we were given a lot of leeway in what we were allowed to do.

We were able to put up lights, tinsel, stickers of snowmen, bells...and even the Christmas tree (an artificial one): Everywhere except the bedrooms and bathrooms had a decoration in them, including my grandfather's office, where we got away with placing a small decorative item; and the conservatory. The kitchen looked festive with some well-placed tinsel on top of the cabinets, and the living room looked splendid with the tree and bells, but what was best was that my grandparents were pleased at what we had done and did not request or tell us to remove anything.

It certainly was an odd experience putting up decorations in a house that was not our own. This year I can look forward to seeing what decorations my grandparents have put up themselves!

Decorations pictures

For the fourth post in a row about Christmas decorations, here are two pictures that give a little insight into what we have done:

This is the smaller of the two "Christmas trees" we assembled yesterday; it was Mum who decorated this tree while my brother and I were decorating the other.

This is one of Mum's ornamental tins decorated with baubles; Mum was trying to find a way to brighten the tin up, and I was able to come up with this arrangement.

Our own decorations (again)

Day two of putting up our decorations took place today! Ironically, the larger items were far easier to put up than the smaller pieces we did yesterday. We strung up some lights in our living room and dining room, and assembled the "tree"; in fact, we were able to build two trees from the branches we had collected from our backyard. The inside of the house looks great, and ready for the season.

The only task that needs completing now is for me to put up some decorations in my room; other than that, I think the decorating is done for this year. In addition, Mum had to move the wreath from the front door to the inside of the house: unfortunately, having it up somehow prevented us from fully locking the door.

I have taken a few pictures of the trees, but when I upload an image it will be of the smaller tree. I will have it ready for tomorrow's post.

Our own decorations

We started to put up our own decorations today! Excluding the wreath, for the most part we have put up minor items such as beads, hearts, stars, ribbons, and baubles, but the house is looking a lot more "Christmasy" already with those small decorative pieces.

Interestingly enough, we have plenty of places around the house to put tinsel (while our house in Oregon was big, it was hard to line it with tinsel), but prior to us leaving the United States we sold all of it along with the Christmas items we could not bring to or would be useless in the United Kingdom (such as lights, as the voltage is different). Still, tinsel can be replaced!

Building a Christmas tree

Myself, my brother, and my mother spent some time in the backyard this afternoon collecting some branches for our Christmas tree this year, as we are going to "build" the Christmas tree from them. Sound strange? I will go into our history of a home-made Christmas tree.

For the first three years in Oregon, we purchased natural Christmas trees, and thanks to having acres of land we were able to plant them all in our yard once the Christmas season had finished (we strongly dislike the practice of throwing away a living tree after Christmas, so we were fortunate to have plenty of land for the trees). In later Christmases we had a fake Christmas tree, but in 2009, our last Christmas in the United States, we decided to do something different and make a tree from branches in our yard.

We went into the woods on our land one morning and collected a few pine and oak branches. We allowed them to dry out for a few days and made sure they were bug-free, then we brought them into the house. After finding a suitable tin to place the branches in (to ensure they could stand up without falling over), we decorated it as we would a normal Christmas tree (although it could not have too many decorations otherwise it would fall over). We even placed the gifts for that year underneath it. It did not look anything like a regular Christmas tree, but it was significantly more fun making our own tree rather than getting a fake one out of a box and subsequently setting it up.

Assembling our own Christmas tree out of branches from our yard is the plan for this year, as we had such a great time making one two years ago. The only thing we need once the branches have dried out is a container to stand them up in, but I am sure we have one somewhere.

Christmas decorations

Christmas decorations are now clearly noticeable in our neighbourhood: a house to the back of our place have put lights up, and our neighbours in the house opposite to ours have put out a beautiful tree next to their front door.

I think that we will be putting up decorations next week, as we need to sort out the boxes they are stored in first (Christmas boxes were some of the ones we did not bother to unpack or sort out). We normally do our decorating near the middle of the month, and I doubt we will put up anything too extravagant, though: we tend to use decorations that are simple to get out/put away, but they always look good.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to seeing what decorations appear in our neighbourhood!