Look out Martha Stewart!

Although we got a bit of snow on the ground before Thanksgiving, we got a bona fide winter storm yesterday. Although it turned into sleet about mid-afternoon and was rapidly turning to massive amounts of slush today, we still have plenty on the ground and it has really helped me turn residual grinchiness from seeing Christmas stuff in the stores in October into a little bit of holiday spirit. After running a couple of errands in the morning, we came home and put up holiday decorations. Martha Stewart would be so impressed with our spindly little 4' tall artificial tree, with decoration that a moved around on an hourly basis. After putting up the tree, we also put up some lights, held in place with festive, seasonally-appropriate blue painter's tape.

But, ya know what? I don't give a honkin' hoot what Martha would think of my display. We listened to Christmas music on the radio and drank hot chocolate while we worked and Bug and Bean were the ones hanging most of the ornaments. I had a wonderful time pulling out the old decorations, including a metallic angel inside a star that is engraved with my first name and "1977," one of the ceramic angel ornaments that my Grandma 'Dell made dated 1972, the drum ornament I took for "show and tell" in kindergarten. (I have absolutely no idea why I remember that, but there was a moment of very vivid recall of the kindergarten room when I took the drum out. I also remember that I had a lot of trouble keeping the drumsticks where they belonged and was very worried about losing one or both of the drum sticks at school), and the handmade felt story book characters that we accumulated a few each year at the Fantasy of Trees at the YWCA (among others, I have the three little kittens. It was a little poignant finding the one kitten that used to have a purple vest and both purple mittens until the Christmas that Kitty Man adopted that kitten as his own and carried it around the house with him no matter how many times we hung it back up or how high on the tree it was. That kitten is down to one purple mitten and lived a year in a basket in the living room when we found him well after the other ornaments had been packed up and put away).

Now the kids are starting to build their own memories with those ornaments. Since the tree was decorated, groups of ornaments have been on the floor talking to each other, flying around the living room, and one reindeer from McDonald's circa 1985 that, Bug tells me, is actually Hello Kitty after having taken a magic potion that turned her into a reindeer (or moose, he keeps going back and forth). There have been and will be a few casualties. At the moment, Bean has piled up all the wheat heads from one ornament. Most of the straw appears to be spread on the floor next to Bug. I am also having zero luck keeping the vintage paper towels and tissue paper that are stuffed under the batting from the snowmen my mom made at least 30 years ago (you can see one of the pair in the upper right of the picture above).

So may I just say, "To he!! with Martha Stewart...I like my decorations A LOT better than hers!"