It's starting to look a lot like Christmas...

I have been trying to get my Christmas decorations up for the last few days.

I am almost there; just have to hang the stockings and put out another nativity. I need to pull the last item out of the attic, still.

It was brought to my attention the other day that, for a person who makes things, I don't have very many of my own hand-made Christmas decorations. This is pretty true; most of the handmade Christmas items I have my Vavo made. Which is fine with me; that is her thing --making Christmas stuff out of wood. I have a lovely set of wood blocks she keeps adding to, and a lovely set of angels she carved and painted. I also have some cloth angels she made in the 70's when I was a kid. She gave them to me a few years back. One Christmas when I asked why they were not hanging, she said, "What? Those dumb old things?" Then she said, "If you like and miss them, you may have them." Oh, I jumped at that chance! I think they are just wonderful in a folk-art sort of way. I will show them sometime this month. She and I have actually had discussions on this. In a joking manner, I was told I couldn't make Christmas decorations to give away 'till well after her departure. That is her thing; every Christmas since I was little, she has made new Christmas decorations. So, I still make Christmas stuff; I just don't make big things like she does. Just little stuff to put on peoples' trees and things like that. Past ornaments I have made: beeswax cookie mold ornament, Romanian lace, temari balls, hand blown ornaments covered with crochet and tatting, paper mache ornament, candy ornaments for kids (such as a life saver man and a gum and life saver plane). Might make some tutorials on those; they are real fun, simple projects to do with kids.

My oldest doesn't even remember half of the decorations or train that I have that goes around the tree. So, this has been real fun for them to see our new old things. The youngest doesn't remember the musical Nutcracker that I have from the San Francisco Music Box Company. Hmmm, I wonder what ever happen to that store? It just disappeared a few years back. I also have a Nativity from them, the one I have yet to pull out. I'll post a few of the other decorations I have from my grandmother in a few days; for today, I am showing my Christmas tree. It has been a long time since it has been up the way I like it. We had little kids and nephews and nieces who would touch the tree, so I left off all the glass ornaments for the last five years. So this is the first time in a long time I have had my tree complete.

I have two parties Saturday at my house so I will probably wait 'till after that to pull out the nativity because little kids seem to like it way to much, and I want to keep it nice for a long time to come.

p.s. The tree actually has red raspberry lights on it. I tried to take pictures of it, but with ten strands of lights on all I got in photos was a creepy, demonic red glow which didn't look like what it looks like in real life; so, I didn't post it lit up.