Decorating for Winter

I love decorating for the holidays. There's something so magical about the lights and the sparkle and the colors that makes everything look just a little nicer and cozier. In fact, I have on occasion been known to get the decorations down on the eve of Thanksgiving and start putting them up before the day is properly over. I truly love Thanksgiving however, and recognized that it was 'rushing' away the day and learned the folly of my ways. Once Christmas is over though, I'm ready to be done with it all. I don't know if it's because I do my decorating the day after Thanksgiving and it's such a long stretch of time to have your decor up, or if it's because the holiday passing signals 'done' in my brain. One year, I took it all down the day after so that we could focus on Corey's birthday party which was on his actual birthday and a Saturday, and The Boy's™ mother scolded me. She gave some silly excuse about wanting to see my house all decorated, but it was a lie, because she had been over several times that season already.

I used to wait until New Year's day to un-decorate, but I find myself doing it sooner and sooner. This year it was on the 29th, which was a Saturday. I was working on college applications with Corey, and The Boy™ and Ash were off at a Baptism for our niece. After having the house decorated for fall, and then Christmas, I found that it was in a sad state of being until spring and Easter. I liked the freshness of it, but everything seemed a little bare. So I collected a few snowmen, nothing to cute, as that's not my style, and started decorating for winter. Last year I added this vase of bare branches to the table. We had such a mild winter, that it was quite easy to go out and collect bare sticks from the yard. It has worked out so nicely that it has sat in that same spot now for an entire year. The height of it balances out the tall apothecary jar on the other side. The jar, that held ornaments during the holiday season, is now filled with small Styrofoam balls. I purchased them at Micheal's, as they remind me of snowballs. Decorating for winter doesn't have to be anything fancy. Last year at Target I found a little figurine of a rather stately looking penguin. My menfolk are big Linux users, which is a computer operating system. In honor of them, and the fact that penguins are a cold weather animal, it sits on a shelf in my downstairs bathroom until the spring decor comes out.

This year I picked up some $1.00 felt snowflake ornaments at Target during the holidays. In fact, I only bought 5 of them, and then I kicked myself for it later on. The first 3 got hung up across the mirror in my dining room. A bunch of years ago I got a gift from a student's parent that was a hanging Christmas Card display from Pier One. I hung it across my mirror, and have never used it to display cards. The silver hangers are pretty enough on their own during the holidays, and the wire they hang off gets used all year long to display other things. While I was taking down the ornaments that hang on the 3 curtain rods in the front room I realized that I wished I had bought 6, as they would look pretty strung in the middle of the rods all winter long. Imagine my delight when I was at Target Friday night and rummaged 2 more up out of the clearance holiday bin. Of course I bought them both, for the bargain price of $0.30 each. Winter is a long, dreary affair here in NH. Anything that can  make it a little brighter is a bonus in my opinion.