Wednesday, November 29, 2017

My Version of a "Minimalist" Christmas

It's time again for Christmas.  Thanksgiving is over and it was a bit strange this year. You might have heard about an pipeline break and oil spill in South Dakota.  Justin has training through his job that qualifies him to respond to environmental disasters such as oil spills so he has been at the site of the spill quite a bit these last few weeks.  He made it for Thanksgiving and long enough to hunt the next day and get his deer for the year but then he went back again.  After seeing their grandparents set up Christmas trees this weekend the kids did not want to wait any longer to set up our tree.

As of last spring, we had not planned on being in this house for Christmas so all the decorations were in a storage unit three hours away.  So, that meant that I got to venture into the unit, unearth the tree and several rather disorganized boxes of Christmas clutter, load them into my vehicle (they took up all the cargo space) haul them home and unload all of it myself while the kids were practically losing their minds with excitement while I tried to clean up the trashed house I left behind when we left for Thanksgiving.  Because who doesn't love the image of practically shoveling toys and books and paper projects and school papers and Thanksgiving decorations and dried out gourds and mini pumpkins out of the way to make room boxes of Christmas stuff.  It was straight out of a Hallmark movie. All that was missing was the cups of hot chocolate with fluffy white marshmallows and candy cane stir sticks.

There is something good about bringing the Christmas tree back into the de-cluttered (but gradually being re-cluttered) house.  We are minus a few pieces of furniture in the living room so the tree actually fits in there this year so it isn't in front of the window in the dining room with the table kind of blocking access like usual.  I like seeing it in the front window so I wasn't sure but it is pretty nice in the living room.



Allan, as you probably recall if you have been reading this for awhile, loves the Christmas tree.  In the past he has loved climbing it and he also enjoys chewing on the branches for some reason.  He was pacing around the box as soon as it was upstairs so I knew he could smell it and he would be chomping away as soon as he could get access.  


As usual...This year he hasn't been climbing it.  He must realize his weight now limits his mobility.  I know exactly how it feels, Al...

Carefully concealed in an solid colored shopping bag in one of the boxes was the recent Christmas tradition that so many people hate to love and love to hate:  Elf on the Shelf.  The kids were asking about it so I knew they remembered.  I see these things on display at many stores so I'm not sure how much lying is going to be required to keep the "magic" alive but we are just going to see what happens as the years go by.  Tessa already seems to know and she interrogated me a few days ago about where we keep it when it's not Christmas and she seemed to know it was me doing the moving.  Last year she pointedly asked me if I was Santa so...I hope she doesn't ruin the fun for the other kids as she gets older.  Ben is a full believer and Milo has no idea what is going on but he knows what Christmas trees are and he knows which stocking is his at least.  

I wasn't sure I wanted to start before the calendar turned to December but I also wasn't sure where to hide it so I set it up to look like the Elf (Ben named him Shelfie...genius) found and set up the stockings after they went to bed on Sunday night.  As of last night, I already almost forgot to move him and today he is dangling from the cord on a set of window blinds.  I have yet to set up any elaborate scenarios with him like you see on social media (snow angels in flour, fishing in the sink, etc.) but I am saving my big favorites (riding the parrot I got in Mexico, perching on top of the tree star) until it is actually December so I don't lose steam.

We got the tree set up and lighted on Sunday night and I said we would do the decorating after school on Monday.  Tessa was whining all day to just get out "a few decorations".  Her weird collector magpie personality really comes out at Christmas and she just can't get enough.

They each adopted a little tree to decorate for their rooms.  I seem to have misplaced a whole box that had the short strings of lights but fortunately I bought a few strings of those trendy "fairy lights" that run on batteries last year.



They were playing "Christmas" and filling those little boxes with junk from around the house.  They also had their stockings down and were filling them with junk from around the house.  Good thing there is a lot of junk around the house.


This is Tessa's first version of her tree.  I bought those little disco balls a long time ago at TJ Maxx and she remembered them from last year.  She kept asking for the "shiny dance balls" and I finally figured out what she wanted.  Since then these trees have been dragged around the house and last night they shut themselves in a bedroom for an hour and redecorated their trees again. That poor little tree with it's burlap base has been with me since my dorm room days.  What a life it's had.  

Here is the new tree location.  It fits nicely.  I want a bigger, fluffier tree at some point but we've just never had the room even as we have expanded from tiny student apartments to larger apartments to houses.  I figured out that this tree was purchased on clearance and first used for Christmas of 2006 so it is eleven years old and it is starting to show it's age.  It sheds a lot of needles and some of the branches are bend and loose (most likely due to cat abuse) and the branches don't look too full without decorations and lights.  I also kind of want a new tree skirt since, as you can see, the one we have is red and the tree has a blue dominant color.  It's hard to see but there are blue beads and plastic filler balls in various shades of blue too.  I checked TJ Maxx (where the red one came from) yesterday morning but they didn't have much.  Just lots of white and silver.  Anything white on the floor of this house is destined for dinge in no time.  


Like the past few years, I have kept breakable ornaments off the tree.  You won't see any "baby's first Christmas" mementos or anything glass on here unless it is some cheap thing I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby for 90% off in February.  The result is a tree mostly decorated with plastic balls from Ikea and lots of felt items and a lot of what are basically plush toys.  









Good thing my favorite childhood ornament is felt!  It's still up high away from reaching hands anyway.  


So far this year this little bird's nest has been the hot item.   The kids take it down, fight over it and then leave it on the floor where I find it left in various rooms of the house.  I don't get it either.  It has a little clip instead of a string so many that's why they like it.  

There are ornament hooks laying all over the floor and Ben collected a bunch and made his own ornaments last night.  It was really cute.  Justin's has a picture of the two of them, Ben's is a patterned ball, Milo's is a baby, Tessa's is a cat's head and mine is also a decorated ball.  


So there you have it. The halls are decked.  I tried to reduce the decorations this year because when it is time to take them down we will have a newborn in the house so I skipped my big Department 56 snow village, many glass figurines and the extra lights hanging in the windows of the kids' rooms and wound around the bannister.  I might have still hung those but the box they were in somehow didn't make it here so that made it easy.  Now..the fun part.  Hiding away all the empty boxes only to take them back out in January, load them back in the car and back across the state to the storage unit.  I'll probably just pile them in the basement with the Halloween and other fall decorations in their orange and black plastic containers and deal with it later.


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