Welcoming the Season

Because everything isn't heavy all the time...

Holiday decorating isn't something I go wild for.  Many of my friends are domestic goddesses-- full displays for Halloween, Easter, Fourth of July, Boss's Day, you name it.  Not me.  I did make a pretty fancy bouquet of decapitated heads for Bastille Day that one year, but generally I don't care that much.  It's just more clutter and work I don't like dealing with.  Even Christmas decorations feel like that EXCEPT for the mantel.  It's my favorite thing to do each year, closely followed by putting lights on the tree (oh that battle!  the bloodshed!  the sap! the LIGHTS!).   Each year, it manifests differently. I wish I had taken more pictures of previous years-- like when I did pine garlands and clementines and twinkling lights.  That was pretty.  This year started with a blue disco ball motif, but I changed my mind and this is what we ended up with:

It's alright from straight ahead, but it's the details that make me linger when I walk past:

The mouse was the ornament Nora picked out on vacation this year.  It joins our collection with the fox and the skunk.  I made those little Santa hats a few years ago when we had my frame full of birds hanging in the living room.  The hats fit these critters just about as well as they fit my bird collection.  The gourds are from our garden and look just as good for Christmas as they did for Thanksgiving.   Gourd haters be damned!

My bird ornaments all found homes on the dining room garland-- that garland was from Papa back at UNISIX and the bird in the center is the one I had hanging in my curtains there, so it's just lovely and sentimental.  I almost didn't hang up the two cages that made their way into the collection-- they make me sad.  But in one, the bird has fallen off the perch, and a cage with a dead bird in it is just right.  I mean, the symbolism, right?  That's what happens, right?  So I figure it encourages the other birds to make the most of their freedom.  The other cage is empty--a threat?  I didn't like a cage hanging up at all, honestly, so I tried to pry the door open, but nearly broke apart the whole thing, so, eh, it went up anyway.  It was a gift, after all.

In other domestic fun, I spent nearly two hours moving the livingroom furniture around and setting up the stereo station.  True to the typical way helens do things like this, I moved things around no less than six different ways and ended up settling on the first configuration I came up with.  Coulda saved myself a lot of heavy lifting.  At least Chris helped me do the last move.  It would have been more annoying to go back to the beginning if I had to wrangle all that furniture myself. 

Delightful irony:  after moving furniture so much today and yesterday, I'm sitting on the floor to write.  Ha!