Friday, December 12, 2014

A Christmas Decorating PhotoJournal

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You know all the crafty, homemaking websites and magazines that show immaculately clean homes all decked out in gorgeous holiday array? Yeah, those pictures were not taken at my house. And probably won't be either. But we do like to deck our halls, or at least our living room, and when Stacie at Super Mommy to the Rescue invited homeschool bloggers to share pictures of their Christmas trees and decorations in a link-up, I decided to show a few of ours. 

My attempts at photos of our Christmas tree don't actually do it justice, in my opinion. We put the tree almost in the doorway between our living room and front entry. We hardly ever use the front door, or that room entry so it's a good spot because the tree can be seen from almost all the way around.  Here are a couple shots seen from the living room side -
   

-and here it is seen from the entry side. Our coat closet and stairs are at that doorway, so we do see the tree from this side, even though we don't go through the doors there. As you can see, I don't put quite as much on this side - the bows and snowflakes are all for the other side.

I used to think a theme for ornaments would be great, but I could never stick to just one theme. Overall, I try to keep to red and white. We have a very large collection of Coca-Cola ornaments; quite a few sports team ornaments; and we're starting to add Tim Horton's coffee themed ornaments as well.
Most years we take a family vacation late in the fall, and we like to pick up an ornament to add to our tree. You can see a couple of mementos from Disney vacations in the collage above, as well as a souvenir from one of the vacations to Canada. (Truth is, the Tim Horton's ornaments come from Canada too!) This woodcut nativity scene is from a trip to Florida that included a visit to St Augustine.

This, however, is my favorite nativity. It is styled after African wood carvings. I love how Joseph is holding the infant Jesus up - it conveys such joy!

This music box remains a favorite holiday decoration too. It is a lighthouse (yes, it does light up) that plays "I Saw Three Ships", and the lighthouse keeper bears a striking resemblance to St Nick.

This year we have a real fir wreath on our front door. It really needs a spotlight on it, but we haven't got that rigged up yet.
We also have a Moravian star on the front porch. I was first introduced to these when I was hired as a church pianist for a small Moravian congregation when we first moved to Maryland. We live fairly  close to Graceham Moravian Church, which was founded in 1746, so these stars are often seen in this area.







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1 comments:

a49erfangirl said...

The African carved nativity set is beautiful. I tried to do themes but with my daughter being little and loving to put the ornaments up, it doesn't work for me. We also have some sports ornaments. My oldest has some Green Bay Packer Superbowl Ornaments from my parents. There is a Christmas place in Door County I have been meaning to go to. I would like to start to pick up an ornament from them once a year for the tree. I would actually like to start gathering them for my kids so when they move out they will have their own. The Morovian Star is beautiful too. Thanks for linking up. We loved seeing your decorations and tree. It's beautiful!

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