decorating – Sweat & Sparkle

Maybe Next Year

On New Year’s Eve, my husband and I canceled our plans, since both of us are finally recovering from a cold and weren’t too keen on venturing out into a 30-degree night. Right before midnight, as the 10-second countdown started ticking down to the new year, my husband straightened up on the couch and brushed at his shirt and smoothed his hair like he was trying to make a good impression on me. I thought it was adorable. We kissed at midnight to welcome the new year together.

We slept in on New Year’s Day, snuggled up under the covers on a chilly morning. It was one of those perfect, no-real-plans, just relaxed and winging it kind of days. When we finally got up, we took a leisurely, hot shower together, then shared the kitchen to cook our traditional, good-luck New Year dishes.

We took today off together too, for a long weekend. This morning we took down the Christmas tree, and now the living room has that odd, empty look to it after all the decorations are gone, until we get used to it again. As much as I love to decorate, I must admit that I feel relieved to have a break for a while! From September all the way through the end of the year, from fall decor to the last of the Christmas lights, it’s non-stop decorating, taking things down, putting the next set up.

Maybe next New Year’s Eve, we will get dressed up, go out somewhere. But the way we celebrated this past one–quiet, peaceful, cozy, happy– was just perfect to me.

One More

I’m pretty sure I have posted this quote before, but that’s okay. I absolutely love it.

My husband and I got a late start with our Christmas tree this year. What can I say? There’s a lot going on. But last weekend, we finally rearranged the living room, got the tree into position, and pulled out all the boxes of ornaments.

Decorating our tree is quite the undertaking. We have been together nearly 20 years, and over that time, we have collected many, many Christmas ornaments.

Taking the lids off those boxes is a bit like Christmas morning, because each ornament is wrapped in tissue paper or bubble wrap, and each one needs to be unwrapped before being placed on the tree. We end up laughing and holding up the ornament we just uncovered:

“Remember this one?”

“Aww, look at this one.”

“Wow, how old is this one now?”

Some of them are deeply sentimental. One of our ornaments used to belong to my husband’s mother. That one gets handled very carefully, hung on the tree where he can see it but where it’s also protected. One of them was a gift from my mom for me, and that one is also gently and tenderly placed on the tree.

Some of them are just fun: sea turtles or shells from our beach trips, animals from zoo adventures, a glittery butterfly just because it’s pretty, personalized ornaments from amusement parks.

And some of them are mementos from important days of our lives: our first Christmas married, our first year in our house, baby’s first Christmas for our grandkids.

Some of the ornaments were picked out by the kids when they were small. I still remember wandering from decorated tree to decorated tree in the shop that day, letting the kids select whichever one caught their eye. Now, some of our ornaments are gifts that the kids have given to us.

It takes considerable time to decorate our tree. After all the ornaments come the pine cones, some tiny, some large, then the little red bows on as many branches as we can fit them. We play the only two Christmas CDs that we own, and then have to replay them, because we aren’t finished yet.

But when we are done, it’s always worth it. Every year, we say it’s the most beautiful tree we’ve ever decorated. Every year, I take pictures. Every year, my husband says he will miss the tree in the living room when we take it down after Christmas.

And every year, it’s my favorite part of Christmas: unwrapping the ornaments one by one, reliving the memories, small pieces of our lives together hanging on those branches, twinkling in the lights. Our tree is not store-bought. Our tree is us, built one ornament at a time, one year at a time, and even though we are running out of room on the tree, we still add at least one ornament each year.

Every year, as we circle the tree, hunting for an open spot, I tell my husband, “Dear, I think we’re running out of room.”

And every year, he tells me, with a tiny smile as he hooks an ornament onto the tree, “There’s always room for one more.”

Grateful

Okay, I am a few days late posting this. But I love the quote and just had to share it.

I wasn’t online the day after Thanksgiving to post this. Or the day after that. Or over the weekend. I had five days off for Thanksgiving, and it still wasn’t enough! We were so busy that the days streaked right by, like I knew they would.

We had a home filled to bursting on Thanksgiving, including two grandchildren, and I was trying to take it all in while still capturing as much as I could with pictures. It was loud. It was chaotic. And I loved it.

I was running from room to room, trying to keep up with an energetic two-year-old, while offering my help in spurts in the kitchen, where my husband was putting the finishing touches on an awesome dinner, and also hopping in and out of conversations as I passed by the kids and their significant others. I didn’t want to miss anything, with anyone.

My husband told me our Thanksgiving table setting looked like something from a magazine, which made me proud. He had helped me pick out flowers for the centerpiece, and I love how it all looked together. A pretty home makes me so happy.

During dinner, I looked around the table, watching everyone talk and eat and laugh, and I thought, this must be how my mom felt all those years, when all four of us kids were home, back at her table, joking around and carrying on–excited to have everyone there, but also knowing that soon everyone will scatter again, and grasping onto each moment and holding onto them while they were there.

I caught my husband’s eye across the table, above the colorful flowers, and felt so content and proud and loved. He was holding our youngest grandson, who is enraptured with my husband’s beard and had his fingers twined around it, like he always does. I grabbed my phone from the living room and caught a quick picture of the two of them, then a picture of the whole gang, before tossing my phone back onto the couch and sitting back down to just enjoy everyone.

We left the mess in the kitchen to relax in the living room with everyone after dinner. As people left, the crowd dwindled, and it was just our oldest son, his wife, and the youngest grandbaby, so we got on the floor and played with him. I didn’t even know my stepson’s wife was taking pictures of us, but when I saw them later, I loved them and was so grateful she took them. My hair was a mess from running around and direly needed a good brushing, but I didn’t care. I was sitting beside my husband, focused on our grandson, cooing and talking, watching him try his hardest to take a step, and I love that picture more than any perfectly posed or filtered snapshot simply because of who I was with, and the moment it captured.

After we waved good-bye to everyone in the driveway, we walked back into the house and realized that the Thanksgiving fairies had not cleaned up any of the dinner mess in the kitchen. We got to work, chatting about the day as we washed and dried dishes, wiped down counters, and swept floors.

As we snuggled up in bed that night, we were still talking about the day, the grandbabies, how good it was to see everyone. I held onto him tight, grateful for the day we met, grateful for the day we had just spent, grateful for our love, our family, our home.

In Her Honor

A 4-day weekend flew by in the blink of an eye. How is it possible for time to unravel so fast when I want it to slow down?

I got a lot done, though, including decorating the porch and the yard for fall. I lit a pumpkin clove candle, put on the fall leaves t-shirt that my husband got for me, and went to town, diving in and out of boxes full of multi-colored leaves, pumpkins, and sunflowers.

It hasn’t actually cooled down much here, but I sneaked a look at the forecast back home, where I grew up. The seventies during the day, dipping into the fifties at night…ahhh, real fall weather! My mom would be delighted, flinging windows open, leaving the screen door open to the crisp, cool air. The shift from summer to fall was always her favorite time of year, too.

This is my fourth time decorating for fall without her. She was in the hospital when I decorated in 2022, but I thought she would be coming home. I never got to show her the pictures I took of our decorations that year. I didn’t know I never would again.

I finished the fireplace mantel, which I always save for last because it takes the longest, and I took a few pictures. One of my stepsons stopped by later that day, and his girlfriend instantly commented how nice everything looked, which made me smile. I put a lot into decorating our home for holidays.

Later, flipping through the pictures, I tried to push the feelings away, but they crept up and sat on my chest anyway. This is when I should be emailing the pictures to my mom, because she had given me some of the decorations, and she got a kick out of seeing them worked into our displays at our house. This was something we always shared, something we had so strongly in common, and the excitement of fall will now always walk hand-in-hand with the ache of wanting to share it all with her but not being able to.

In her honor this year, I featured one of the items from her house as the centerpiece of our mantel. I like seeing it surrounded with fall foliage and lights and colorful pumpkins. I miss her, but I will celebrate her, honor her, through our love of fall and decorating. It is one way that I have found to stay as close to her as I possibly can.

October Already?

I can’t believe we are not only into October, but almost halfway through already. Weren’t we just celebrating the new year yesterday? I don’t believe a year has ever gone by as quickly as this one.

This morning was a touch cooler than it has been, and I am enjoying it immensely. Not chilly yet, but at least not hot and humid. I’ll take it.

I definitely took to heart the “go over-the-top with fall decorations” part of this quote. From our front porch railings to our door wreath, from our living room to our kitchen and even bathrooms, our home has been dripping with colorful leaves, pumpkin scents, and autumn-colored flowers. My younger stepson joked that all I need is a sign that says “Happy fall, y’all”, but thankfully, I am not quite that far gone yet (that saying makes me cringe so hard!)

Hurricanes have held up our Halloween decorating. If the weather is ready to cooperate, we might get started on that over the weekend. I leave most of the outdoor Halloween display to my husband, though. He has an impressive collection of life-size skeletons, tombstones of all sizes, ghouls and ghosts, and he rigs up a different display every year. People stop to take pictures of it, and our neighbors have actually asked in the past when he will do it again, if they feel he is tardy in entertaining them.

Soon we will be unpacking all the Thanksgiving decorations, then the red and green, the gold, the sparkle of Christmas. I am 99% done with my Christmas shopping, since I start so early, but it still feels unreal that it is rapidly approaching.

But first…let’s not drift too far from one of my favorite holidays: twenty days to Halloween!