I started my day with pecan pie; I'm ending it with pecan pie. Don't judge, okay? It's a holiday weekend.
And in between, I've been busy as a bird-dog taking down all my fall decorations and boxing those up, then dragging out box after box of Christmas decorations.
Fortunately, it was nice out, and I didn't even need a jacket much of the day as I worked on the porches.
I still have a lot to do...but at least I have the appropriate trees in the appropriate rooms. I'll get them out of their boxes tomorrow or Sunday. I plan to decorate three-my living room tree, my Victorian tree in the bedroom, and my nature tree.
I think this is the earliest I've ever begun my Christmas decorating, but if I don't do it this weekend, I don't know when it will get done. There's going to be a lot of Christmas events to cover for the paper in upcoming weeks, not to mention all the shopping and other festivities going on.
Besides, it's not worth the trouble to drag this stuff out to leave it up for only a couple of weeks. Typically, I un-decorate about the second week of January. I tell myself I'm observing "old Christmas," but maybe I just procrastinate.
Sorting through Christmas decorations is definitely a trip down memory lane. So many ornaments have stories attached; many of my decorations remind me of "stages" of our children's lives.
I found some old cards we'd received years ago, and I tossed several of them. That's a hard thing for me to do!
But there were a few from relatives who've passed on that I could not bring myself to throw away.
One card contained a note from my uncle Edd. (I always spelled his name Ed, but he'd signed it Edd. I guess I did it wrong all those years.)
The note said someone once told him that the way to a person's heart is through their stomach, and he hoped we enjoyed the treats he had prepared.
Uncle Edd liked to bake loaves of bread or make peach or pear preserves and give them to us at Christmastime.
He sometimes gave us tins of hard candy, which we didn't really like, but I'd pass it on to a relative on "the other side of the house" so it wouldn't go to waste.
Uncle Edd made decorative boxes for us from old Christmas cards one year. He was a tinkerer, and he'd work so patiently with his gnarled hands, twisted by arthritis.
I miss him very much; there will never be another like him. He was a survivor of childhood polio, but it left him with a withered leg that was shorter than the other.
Afterward, he always walked with a limp, a bad one, but that didn't stop him from working hard. He could do just about anything, and I always admired him for his strength of will. Some might have called it stubbornness.
Uncle Edd joined us at my parents' house on Christmas Day for many years after his wife died. He lived to be 85 years old.
So yeah, these are the kinds of side trips my mind takes when I decorate for Christmas each year. And this is but one of many reasons I have trouble throwing things away.
I made this centerpiece with fresh greenery a couple of years ago...I hope to make one for this year. I love fresh greenery in the house, or in my window boxes, or stuck in decorative containers on the porch!
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