Holidays

I absolutely love fall and the beautiful weather and the changing leaves and the wondrous scenery. I also love that I really can decorate most areas of the house just once in early September and have it last through Thanksgiving (but I do put out some Halloween-specific items in there that get taken down or switched out in early November). From September to November, our house has gold, orange, yellow, deep red, and brown accents to it to bring out the lustrous fall colors.

Then the Saturday after Thanksgiving, all the fall items get packed away and we decorate for Christmas and winter. Again, I try to do some versatile decorations like pine cones and garland that can stay up for the winteryness of January. Last year, I adored our entryway with the posts and knolls all covered with garland and bulbs...I loved walking in the door just to see our foyer.

In December, I try to focus on reds, greens, golds or silvers (depending on the room) with pine cones and pine garland as the focal accents. I'm so excited to have 2, large formal Christmas trees this year. Our traditional red, green and gold tree is displayed in our dining room as the dining room is viewable from the road and I love having that twinkling in our windows with all of the wreaths and lights. We haven't decided where we will put our second tree. I'm thinking now that we have the basement theater room and anticipate spending a significant amount of time down there that we will put the second tree there. The second tree will be mainly silver based and will hold all the sentimental ornaments we have collected through the years...all of our Swarovski, Hallmark, sports, homemade, annuals, Firsts, exchanges, etc. Then, our living room which now has a swing where I originally envisioned the second tree will be formally decorated with garlands and accents but no large tree.

The next step is selecting Brooklyn's First Christmas ornament. I plan to get one of the Baby's First Christmas ornaments from Lenox to continue with our Lenox Firsts ornament and also the traditional, everyone-gets-a-Hallmark First Christmas ornament. I would also like to start a tradition for Brooklyn of getting her an ornament each year (inspired by Kisa and her Frosty Friends collection). I know Erik and I have collected (or will Ebay the remaining missing ornaments) the Swarovski Annual Snowflake for each year since we started dating (so we have to go all the way back to 1998) b/c in 30 years or so, I'd love to see an entire tree glimmering with the beauty of the Swarovski snowflakes and thinking about what we did that year.

So, any thoughts on what to do for Brooklyn? I'd love to have her take these ornaments with her to her own home some day so I definitely want them to "go together." I'd love if the company put out the ornament in each year's version and dating and include a story behind what happened that year for her so it would be like a walk down memory lane every time she put up the ornaments. Maybe the Swarovski snowflake; what about the Lenox snowflake; Waterford bell? Any thoughts??

Finally in January, I keep most of the pine and garland and transition to the lovely, wintry icy blue color and have accents of snowmen in the house. By February, everything's exchanged out for reds and roses for Valentine's Day and then March, it's greens and golds for St. Patrick's Day. April, hopefully unless Easter is early, brings out the eggs and pastels. By the time we get to May-August, it's summer and I usually just have summery wreathes up and avoid more of formal decorating.