It's no secret that I love this time of year. I cannot wait for Christmas songs and Christmas lights, Christmas cookies and Christmas movies. Tim loves every sappy holiday movie and we always joke "I wonder if they will end up together". Spoiler alert -they always do. I sing Christmas carols/songs pretty much all year through, but I feel less like a crazy person when I'm singing "rocking around the Christmas tree, it's a happy holiday" in December than I do in May. We also love driving and looking at lights. I think that is the one thing Tim wishes was different about our farm. No sense putting up Christmas lights here when a. no one drives by and b. even if they did - our house is completely hidden from the road.
Personally I love decorating for Christmas. I have a large village that I inherited from my mom that I can't wait to put up each year. Over the years I've added a few pieces to the village through gifts or buying my own. I remember my mom having the village up at her home and I think of her every year as I put the little skaters on their "pond" and flip the lights on inside the many little buildings. I also have a large snowman collection to put out and then I have 4 trees that I put up.
Two of the trees are smaller. One is a Disney theme with tiny ornaments for a bunch of Disney characters. The other is our "horse" themed tree with tiny Breyer horses and plaid ribbon. But I also have two full sized Christmas trees. I love gorgeous trees. I have serious tree envy with some of the trees my friends and family put up at the holidays. Please always share your trees on social media because I cannot wait for those posts every year. It is such a joy how people take the same idea, with limited color options and make their trees beautiful and unique. When Tim and I joined our households, we each had our own pre-lit Christmas tree. One with white lights and one with colored. Instead of choosing one and getting rid of the other, we decided, "why not both? Both is good."
What ended up happening over the last few years is that one tree became our "pretty" tree. The white light tree is decorated in all silver, white and shades of blue, with silver ribbon and a beautiful white angel. Any ornaments that we add to the family in those colors go on that tree. There are a few special ornaments, but for the most part, the ornaments on that tree were purchased to decorate that tree and make it more beautiful. Icicles and bells, balls and snowflakes. I love that gorgeous tree. But if I had to pick a tree that is my favorite, the other tree would win hands down.
Our other tree has the traditional multicolored lights. The ornaments don't match and are a hodgepodge of everything from the old (like when my parents were first married) to the new (the ornament I got as a Christmas gift from a student last year). There are Disney ornaments from when the girls were little and sports themed ornaments from when Tim was decorating his first "I'm single" tree. There are Precious Moments ornaments from that phase of my life and ornaments from when Tim and I were married (our first Christmas). There are old wooden ornaments that hung between the tinseled branches of my parents' tree and ornaments that say "From Grandma Pokey" on the back. There are cross-stitched ornaments that Tim's mother carefully made us and ornaments from students over the years. There are ornaments the girls made as gifts from school and ornaments that I made of the girls. There is even one clay ornament with a faded red headed toddler on it that I'm quite sure my mother made of me. Every ornament tells a story, brings back a memory and has a special place in my heart. It isn't the prettiest or most modern. It doesn't have a theme or any rhyme or reason to it. But it's my favorite tree because for me - this tree represents what Christmas is all about. Family.
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