What a Life!

There’s more to decorating for the holidays than just the Christmas tree. I must confess, though, that the tree is about all we have. So today’s post is more of a wish list than show-and-tell.

I love holiday wreaths. My favorites are the dark green ones made out of faux Christmas tree branches, but I’ve seen others made of pine cones and other oddities that were beautiful as well. I would love to have a holiday wreath hanging on our front door. But usually you’re looking at $50 for a ready-made one or less if you buy a plain one but then you spend about the same by the time you get it decorated. And decorating something like a wreath is not something I’m really good at. I am good at assembling things – I am not good at deciding what should go on something and figuring out how to make it look nice. So alas! we do not have a Christmas wreath.

I tell myself, it would hang on the front door so I wouldn’t get to see it much – just when I come home from town once or twice a week and when I go out to get the mail. So much expense for so little enjoyment hardly seems prudent. But I love them so much, I still want one. When other people post pictures of their decorations, it’s the wreaths that I spend the most time looking at. I saw a neat one this year where a knitter had made tiny little sweater ornaments and decorated one with them. Maybe I just need to spend $25 on a plain one and then decorate it differently every year. I don’t know. I really love Christmas wreaths, though. If I could think of a place to hang it inside my house so I could enjoy it more, I be even more tempted to get one. Woe is me!

Steve’s mom decorates her house for every season. When she lived here, I swear, every time we went over to her house, she had it decorated differently. For fall. For St. Patricks Day. For Valentines. Kind of like elementary school classroom where your teacher changes the decor every month. I’ve never been into all of that. It can easily turn into clutter and just be in the way. And think of all the stuff you have to store and get out and put away all the time? I’d decorate for St. Patty’s Day and it would still be up in October, I think.

For Christmas, though, I’ve thought it would be nice to have a holiday centerpiece for the dining room table. And holiday linens for Christmas dinner. A nice table cloth and coordinating cloth napkins. I don’t think I would want Christmas dishes, though – either plates for the table or even serving dishes. It would just be one more thing to store and have in my way and then to have to remember to dig it out every year. Again, not my cup of tea.

The other Christmas decoration I would really like to have is Christmas stockings. I have plain red ones with white tops. But they’re just cheap ones I picked up to get by. [In some years past, I have filled them on Christmas Eve to be opened on Christmas morning. I didn’t get that done this year, though.] I’ve seen some really cool knitted ones I would love to have (and make, of course). I even bought yarn to make one a couple days before Christmas – I’d seen a pattern I loved and one of the online stores had yarn packs for it (so you don’t have to figure out what yarn you need and how much and all that). There is a pattern for an aran stocking in last year’s Vogue Knitting holiday magazine that I love. Then there is a blue-white-red striped one in one of the holiday knitting books that I drool over every year. I just have never gotten around to making them, though. Maybe next year, now that I have bought some yarn specifically for a stocking, I will get around to making some. They would be so pretty.

My mom always had holiday decorations that replaced some of the normal decorations – like candles and such – in the living room during the holiday season. Now that I have a piano, I think a nice holiday decoration for the top of the piano would be nice. I need to start watching for something I would like up there. I think part of my problem is that I avoid the sections of the store where they have the holiday decorations. It always seems so cluttered in that area. I don’t know if it is the nature of holiday decorations or if people are just digging through them all the time and the poor clerks can’t keep things straight. Everyone online was talking about the Pottery Barn catalog last fall and all the neat ideas in it. Now that’s more like what I would be interested in. Their stuff might not fit in my budget, but I could either save for it or just glean ideas from it. I need to look into that…