No Place Like Home #4

It’s time again for No Place Like Home with our hostess Sandi at Rose Chintz Cottage. This is the 4th Monday.

This year we stumbled on a good deal for a pre-lit artificial tree so we surrendered to the idea for the convenience. The Angel topper has been with us for most of our Christmases.

Our first Christmas ornament in the upper left corner was a wedding gift back in 1974. We were married in December. Many old ornaments and some new ones mixed in.

I have a college friend who sends these pop up cards every year. We’ve saved most of them and like to display them. There are several more of them not pictured.

From our home to your home we hope that you have a melody in your heart during this joy filled time of year!

“O Come, Let Us Adore Him”

Christmas Past Mosaics

2013 Nativities. I’ve gone a little overboard adding 5 more nativity sets since 2013.

2014 Joy is always a strong theme at Christmas time.

2015

2016

2017: Our most delightful Christmas addition.

These are all mosaics made with Picasa on my good ole laptop that died in November. I’m still looking for a program to create mosaics/collages on my new computer.

Our little Addy has changed so much since last Christmas.

December 2018

And for context, below was our view on our way to church this morning. We had a couple of inches of snow overnight that turned to rain while we were in church so now everything is pretty slushy.

Linking up with Angie for Mosaic Monday. Thank you for hosting, Angie!

Only 9 days until Christmas! Are you ready? We don’t have our tree up yet.

Mystery Tree 2017

We are again pleased with our stress free Mystery Tree for 2017. We bought it at Home Depot this year and brought it home tied up with string. We skipped having it netted since we had the truck to bring it home in. This is a tradition we have kept going for several years now borrowed from my sister-in-law.

It’s a taller and chubbier tree then we’ve had in the past few years. My decorations have always been down home not fancy. Red glass balls that have now seen better days and ornaments we’ve received or collected over the years.

Our new ornament this year is Addy’s hand print and she turned 9 months old on December 20th!

Looking forward to the day that Addy will be able to enjoy the hands on Nativity sets.

I’m pleased to say that all the gifts I’m responsible for are wrapped and under the tree. Now I’m moving on to making the shopping lists for the meals we will enjoy on Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

I’ve been asking myself what day it is each day this week. How are things going for you?

Mystery Tree 2016

This year while I was having fun downtown with our oldest, Dear did the honors of picking out the mystery tree and bringing it home. He set it up in it’s designated spot this year and waited for me to come home from gallivanting and to cut the string while I watched the reveal. Another stress free tree that will serve our purposes well.

Dear put the lights on and then I added the ornaments.

This will be the room that we discover what things are in our stockings and where we open the gifts from under the tree. This year our immediate family decided to draw names instead of buying gifts for each one. Dear is unemployed and has been unemployed for 6 months now. Our daughter Katie and Andrew are not employed. Andrew is going to school full time in Aeronautical Engineering courses at the University of Washington and Katie hasn’t found a part-time job yet. Dan and Jamie are moving into a new to them house right now. They are financially stretched and with the new baby coming Jamie will be quitting her job and staying home with our new granddaughter. Josh and Laura are still both employed and doing well. We all decided it makes sense to cut down on the gift buying. We will still have a wonderful celebration but with less wrapping paper to deal with.

Hope you are all in the midst of joy and wonder during this great time of the year. If not I hope you find that joy and wonder soon.

Charlie the Tree…

Here’s Charlie our Free Range Tree!

It wasn’t intentional but the lights on our tree form a cross intersecting with the lights on our window frame. From the manger to the cross will be celebrated with gratitude to our Savior, Jesus Christ at this old house!

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage on their site. All my photos that I stored and uploaded from that site are now big ugly black and grey boxes with a message to pay big bucks to get them restored to my blog. It will take me a long time to restore thousands of posts.

Boxing Day Favorites

Boy was I wiped out after a wonderful full day of celebrating with our kids yesterday. My kids are all adults so I can only imagine how much more wiped out I’d be if there were little ones to chase about the house and entertain…

The favorite new tradition were our Christmas Crackers/Poppers. We got such a kick out of the cheesy little gifts and jokes that popped out and we all wore our tissue crowns through breakfast. Josh and Katie pretty much wore their crowns all day long…fun times.

Santa really loaded up our stockings this year…

It would be great if in the U.S.A. Boxing day was a holiday, too, like Great Britain and Canada or St. Stephens Day in Ireland. Dear has been at work for many hours already. Dan will be hitting the road to cross the Cascade Mountain range later this morning. He should make it home in 5 or so hours.

I read up about Boxing Day online and it’s interesting to read some of the history. Here’s a little view of all our Christmas Boxes. This year was a banner year for boxes.

When Katie and I were in Vancouver B.C. I bought one thing at the Christmas Market, this pretty little bird.

Another new ornament that is perfect on my tree is this next one from Lovella. Joy really is fulfilled in Christmas.

This year my Wee Forest Folk Nativity is now complete. The last piece needed was the Wise Man in a Turban. He was under the tree this year…

I know lots of you are celebrating with your loved ones today. When your family expands you need to be flexible and go with the flow. Are you a Boxing day shopper? Do you rush out the day after to add to your Christmas stash from the clearance sales? For the rest of you I hope you have time to reflect and relax on this Boxing Day 2013.

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Tag Archives: Christmas Ornaments