Holiday decorating
Dec. 2nd, 2008 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeanvieveSo spent a couple bucks on a cheap light set for the cheap fake tree. Then mom pulled out all the decorations in the world, and was bemoaning about where all the rest of them went. Apparently there used to be something like twenty totes of Christmas, and she could only save two.
Oh great, I thought. Let's not go here again!
We didn't. Instead we decorated the Charlie Brown tree together listening to Christmas songs. I got to hang some ornaments, the globes, and the garland, then we both stood back to look at it. She suggested one globe be moved. Then maybe that one. Then pursed her lips, looking at my garland.
I remember childhood. We'd all help decorate the tree together, a family affair just like now. Though I was very very quickly taken off tinsel duty due to misuse and entirely the wrong attitude about what is fun to do with it. Ditto those lights. Still, we'd all hang things, and mom would make a big deal about the result. The next morning, the tree always looked amazing. And yet, not the same as when we went to bed.
My mother makes things beautiful. She decorates the way Martha Stewart on no money wishes she could. (You guys WISH you had a wreath like the one I rescued for $3 from Goodwill and mom worked over with her glue gun and some old potpourri.) So I know that the next time I go downstairs, the garland will be right, the ornaments will be arranged from large toward the bottom to smaller on top, and in all ways my inadequacies as a tree trimmer will be smoothed over by a loving hand. The tree will look magnificent, expensive, as if we'd intended it that way all along and didn't do all our decorating on under $20 start to finish on the house.
She's agreed we can make and decorate sugar cookies to put into the gift baskets that we're making for neighbors and waifs. I don't like to eat them. I just like to decorate them. And mom will also make sure that none of my sorry looking, drippy, or lopsided cookies are on top when we present the baskets to their recipients. Mine will be on the bottom, so that it can excuse itself saying that it got squished between the next cookie up and the jar of canned plum sauce.
It's a recurring leitmotif. My nieces and nephews are lucky to have such a grandma, the kind they show on TV. I don't think I'd ever be that good at it. Did I mention she also strings garland professionally? Or as professionally as anyone ever did it. The things that woman can do with wire...
Oh great, I thought. Let's not go here again!
We didn't. Instead we decorated the Charlie Brown tree together listening to Christmas songs. I got to hang some ornaments, the globes, and the garland, then we both stood back to look at it. She suggested one globe be moved. Then maybe that one. Then pursed her lips, looking at my garland.
I remember childhood. We'd all help decorate the tree together, a family affair just like now. Though I was very very quickly taken off tinsel duty due to misuse and entirely the wrong attitude about what is fun to do with it. Ditto those lights. Still, we'd all hang things, and mom would make a big deal about the result. The next morning, the tree always looked amazing. And yet, not the same as when we went to bed.
My mother makes things beautiful. She decorates the way Martha Stewart on no money wishes she could. (You guys WISH you had a wreath like the one I rescued for $3 from Goodwill and mom worked over with her glue gun and some old potpourri.) So I know that the next time I go downstairs, the garland will be right, the ornaments will be arranged from large toward the bottom to smaller on top, and in all ways my inadequacies as a tree trimmer will be smoothed over by a loving hand. The tree will look magnificent, expensive, as if we'd intended it that way all along and didn't do all our decorating on under $20 start to finish on the house.
She's agreed we can make and decorate sugar cookies to put into the gift baskets that we're making for neighbors and waifs. I don't like to eat them. I just like to decorate them. And mom will also make sure that none of my sorry looking, drippy, or lopsided cookies are on top when we present the baskets to their recipients. Mine will be on the bottom, so that it can excuse itself saying that it got squished between the next cookie up and the jar of canned plum sauce.
It's a recurring leitmotif. My nieces and nephews are lucky to have such a grandma, the kind they show on TV. I don't think I'd ever be that good at it. Did I mention she also strings garland professionally? Or as professionally as anyone ever did it. The things that woman can do with wire...
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-03 03:42 pm (UTC)That sounds like fun what you guys did! Pictures prease?
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Date: 2008-12-03 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 05:13 pm (UTC)After kitties yakked up enough bloody tinsel and strange bad smells started in the kitchen, that tinsel privilege was taken away.