20 Little Things To Love About Christmas

Whoops!

Melissa, over at the Inspired Room is doing a List Party. Just write your 20 favorite little things to treasure about Christmas, follow her instructions and post it. It is fun to see what other people love best about the holidaysand to recognize what brings us joy in this Season.

Washington's Beautiful Tree

1. Christmas Home Tours, both in person and in the Blogsphere
2. Watching the first Christmas Tree Lots go up and the fragrance of the trees
3. Keeping in touch with others and taking photos to preserve the magic moments
4. Finding just the right gift & especially while shopping with the girls!
5. Tire traction on non-icy roads, rails and runways
6. Christmas music & Christmas movies
7. Hearing the Salvation Army bells ringing outside the stores
8. Santa pictures of the kids and their letters to him
9. Candy canes, peppermint ice cream, and Christmas cookies
10. Outside Christmas Lights~From the ridiculous to the sublime
11. Shops featuring their Christmas Bling
12 Hot chocolate, ginger bread men, a warm fuzzy throw & The Preacher's Wife
13 Being with Family and Friends more than usual
14. Utah's white Christmas & wearing a warm neck scarf in the glistening snow
15. Glittery, glitzy Christmas decor & flocked Christmas trees
16. Stockings & stuffers & the excitement on the grandkids' faces
17. Christmas scented candle light & crackling fires
18. Any and all Christmas Trees
19. Memories~And Making Them
20. The Reason For The Season

I guess some of those things are not "little things," but I love them!

**Rethinking #18 after looking and voting at this site.

Your Christmas Table

It's Christmas!

Just about every year we have a Christmas Home Tour that includes our home. I love being able to participate in them because it challenges me to find new ways of using the same treasures I have had for years along with the things I pick up here and there each time I leave the house every year. I love collecting Christmas things and I hope that someday they will find a nice home with our children and grandchildren and that they will be cherished by them too. I don't have a ton of things to hand down to them but I do have Christmas~ in a big way! Jim can attest to that as he hauls down box after box! I have no secrets from him!

One of the first things I started my collection with was our silverware and Christmas dishes. When I went to work after Laura got into school, they were the very first things I bought. We had been having Christmas for several years at our home and I really longed for a table that was uniform and pretty with matching glassware, etc. (In those days the mix and match we do now was not chic it was just plain old hodgepodge). Prior to purchasing our tableware, it meant always using stuff I would scrounge by running around borrowing from the older relatives. So with my first few paychecks I bought these dishes and the silverware. The red "Depression Glass" (an oxymoron because they make me so happy) ruby glasses are a collection that took several years to find in my travels. I have always been in love with them!

It is such a pleasure to have enough
place settings for everyone.

I have our dining room table set with
them right now for the home tour.
I just love these dishes because they
hold memories of about
25 family Christmas dinners so far.

This is my centerpiece that came from an estate sale
and tomorrow I am going to fill it with ornaments.
I really need to spend all my time now working on
the menu for next Sunday, etc. but I'd rather
fool around with the centerpiece!
(Or be blogging!)

I had a whole box of ornaments I found after the
trees were done, so they can go right in here. You
usually see glass containers like this with just round ball
ornaments but it is fun to put all different shapes and sizes in too.

OK, Now I'm Ready!

The Finished Look
Can You Come to Dinner Next Sunday?

Jim and I love entertaining our extended family each year and creating an inviting place for them to relax and enjoy Christmas. What do you like to do around your Christmas table? There are about as many different beautiful possibilities as there are tables. Being creative about it is the fun part. And putting a bit of yourself into it! It doesn't have to be fancy, or elegant, or even matchy anymore~it just has to come from your creative gifts and your guests will leave with some happy thoughts about how they 'felt' in your home. Everything that you do creates a memory for someone. Isn't that an exciting thought?

Coming Home For Christmas

Here Are Some Photos of Christmas in Our Cottage
(Double Click for a better view)

I Love to Include These For the Kids
It Has Been A long Time Since
They Have Been Home For Christmas

Way Back When!
Christopher, Laura, Jennifer
(Est. 1984?)

The Tree

Creche From My Childhood

Mini Cake Stand and Glittery 40's Girl

Contents of the Mini Cake Stand~Tiny Ornaments

Snow Men Everywhere

Snow Fam and Vintage Wire Tree

Kitchen

Shelves of the Beautiful Cabinet

Uncle Tom Gave Me One Christmas~
Tears of Joy and Surprise Were Shed!

Dining Room

Mantel With the Carollers Gramma Jo
Gave Me Year After Year.
Cherished Memories

Buffet With the Beautiful Roses from
Laura And Robert's Christmas Wedding
(No One Can Say We Did Not Get Our Money's Worth on These!)

Spencer's Bear, Poley, Joins the Dinner Guests!

Not a Creature Was Stirring Not Even A Lamb!
(Sorry Not A Mouse Fan!)

The Guest Room

No Guests Overnight This Christmas!

Our Bedroom Dresser

Memories and Reflections

Our Room

The Office

Family Room

Bathroom Shelf Top

Grampa Ross' Childhood Sleigh Bells Among the Other Stuff.
The Bells are Nearly 100 Years Old!

Beloved Byers Carolers Up Close

Some Festive Ducks Aunt Beth
Gave Me Last Year in the Entry

That is it, sure wish you could stop by for awhile! I'd take a picture of the front porch but the gorgoeus poinsettias I bought just two days ago are now all frozen, shriveled up and dying.

C'est La Vie~It Shall Be A Merry Christmas Even Without Them!

The Turning of Our Hearts At Christmas Time

This post is one I wrote on my personal blog and just wanted to include it here also even though it deviates from my niche of interior decorating just a bit. I have met so many wonderful Christian women on the blogs and I am sure some of these things are on your minds as well in this Christmas season.

With all the glitz and glam and fun of Christmas that we enjoy so much ...always in the back of my mind is what I can do for someone in need at this time of year. I am almost overwhelmed when I think about it. So many need so much or have suffered a lot this year and just need to be remembered. I am trying to think of special ways to help out that would mean something to these people.

One thing I thought of was donating a nice coat from my closet to a homeless person when a little Cub Scout came by asking me to support this effort. It was a small sacrifice to help someone stay warm during the bitter cold of winter.


Another thing I want to do is sign up my neighbors (who have had a tremendously difficult year with multiple serious medical issues) for some beautiful caroling from the youth in our church.

While at church today I was prompted to invite a young woman who is living here all alone from Columbia and missing her family, to come to our family dinner in a few weeks. It would be terrible to be lonely at Christmas time.


I have two uncles left that are both shut-ins. I want to send them some scanned and copied photos of the good old days to cheer them up. I know that would make my parents happy to think that I did something for their siblings.


I want to send some grocery gift cards to the Ronald Mc Donald type house here in Oakland that always needs milk for the families staying in the house while their tiny babies and children are in the hospital. OOur family received this tender mercy with our youngest granddaughter more than once over the past 15 months when she was hospitalized. I want to pay it forward.

Our church is donating school supplies and children's books to needy kids this year. The needs and lack of necessities for so many is so apparent it is mind-boggling.


I am looking for some more ideas that are not costly but can mean a lot and that is where you all come in. What are your ideas for reaching out this year? There is so much to do and the Lord has need of willing hands. If we can each just do a little something to make a difference in someone's life what a better Christmas it will be for all. The earth needs this right now, don't you think? I need more ideas. I have a friend who just lost her mom, my friend is suffering...what to do..what to do??

You are all such ministering angels, I know you can think of something.

photos as seen on Flickr

Vintage Chrsitmas Decorations

My friend, Deanna, has this awesome Christmas Blog and she is totally the Queen of Vintage Christmases. If you want to see what was happening when I was growing up in the 50's and 60's and what Christmas looked like then...check out this fun website for Shiny Brite Ornaments, etc. These little video clips bring back so many memories for me. It is amazing but I can still remember the packaging of these items the originated post WWII in the late 40's. Very Nostalgic!

I remember having to painstakingly put them all back in the boxes and having to take the tinsel off the one strand at a time to save for the next year. The ornaments were very thin glass and easily broken so we had to take special care of them. It was never as fun as putting the tree up of course. That is about the only thing that hasn't changed in the ensuing years!

I am glad that Deanna is so interested in this time way before she was born because it really brings me back to those bygone days in my own childhood. I am hopeful that our kids will find it interesting to look at things as they were in the good ole days! All these Shiny Brite products were available way into the 60's so this was basically my whole childhood. Everybody had them...and I do mean everybody! In those times there was not much variety in Christmas decor.

No one had a Santa collection or a snowman collection then. It was just after the war when things were taken off rationing and this is what was available to the households of America. They were thrilled just to be reunited with loved ones and to be able to light their Christmas trees again. It was simply enough.


Our friends had the bubble lites by the time the mid- 50's rolled around and as kids we were always quite envious of that. In our house though we were lucky too! We had a paste board nativity set that is the only tangible remnant of Christmas from when I was a little girl. It is a prized possession in my Christmas collection today.

The colors are still bright!

It has held up well considering it is just a heavy cardboard stable.

When Christmas is past you just fold up the part where the wise men and shepherd are and it is its own self-contained box for storage. It was pretty cleverly made really and probably cost about a dollar or two. Now, to me it is priceless. What do you treasure from Christmas as a child?

If you like vintage~Stop over and meet Deanna and please tell her I sent you!

ornaments and bubble lites as seen on flickr