Christmas Memories

These are pictures of Christmas at our house. If you look at the top picture, you will see snowflakes hanging from the beam. These are all hand cut out of paper with an exacto knife. I have saved them for years and have never been able to make any so intricate since. =) On the beam on the right are hand made ornaments. I have two sister in laws that are into beading. They make us Christmas ornaments. The icicles are glass and all twisted and delicate. The stars are made of ornate metal. Each one is a treasure.

The second picture is of my table. You can see Christmas cards at the top of the closet door and then my first birthday card lower on the door. The last picture is a close up of the table taken without the flash. I love to have candles going. My husband and son always come in and exclaim how dark it is in here. =) Then all the lights go on. Sometimes late at night we will turn off all the lights, but the tree lights and sit and talk quietly or listen to Christmas carols as we snuggle up together.

The third picture is of items from my childhood. The little green tree lights up and blinks. Each star on it, used to have different colors of cellophane on it. They were long ago punched out and I have replaced them all with red (the only color I had on hand). It no longer blinks either. The little choir used to always sit on the mantle. The choir figurines as well as the two little angels are all wax candles.

The next picture is of our tree. Sometimes I have strung popcorn and cranberries for a garland, but did not do it this year. I also had some red wooden beads that looked like cranberries, but we have lost a box of Christmas stuff somewhere in the shuffle. So, this year it is much more plain than normal, but I still love plain. The wooden star on top was cut out and painted by me. The pattern came from a book. The lady called the star binkle, because when she made her first one, her little 3 year old cried out, "Binkle binkle little star, how I wandered where you were." That has always made me smile. I don't know if you click on the picture of the tree if you will be able to see it any better, but there are at least 6 snowflakes with pictures of Joshua in the center. At one of our churches in Florida, they gave each child 6th grade and down a snowflake ornament to take home. It has the year on the back. They are my favorite ornaments. The heart with the handprint was made by Joshua when he was 2 years old. All my ornaments are either homemade or special gifts from people.

Tomorrow, I will put up pictures of our nativity sets. Our neighbors have a very large beautiful set they put on top of their piano. Since they and we believe that the wisemen probably did not get there until Jesus was about 2 years old, they put them over on one end around a fire ("far" if you are a hillbilly like we are). So, they say the wisemen came from a "far". =)