Christmas Memories

Yesterday I spent 3 hours sorting and organizing Christmas decorations. I have hundreds, probably enough to decorate 10 trees. I even have a few of the old Santa decorations from the tree we had when I was young. And every year I buy more.

That's me on the left (many years ago!) in front of a little tree. See the red Santas with the twisted legs? They were one of my favourites when I was a kid. Those long legs that could be twisted around in every direction really tickled me. Santa was tall and skinny instead of rotund, another fact I loved as a kid. I managed to save a couple of those Santas and they've gone with me through many years and many moves.

So yesterday was a lot of fun. I even found my old Christmas Eve Stocking from 1969! Each decoration I found, unwrapped and held, reminded me of something - an event from the past, a tree put up 10 years ago that looked like a Charlie Brown Christmas, a friend, a relative who gave me the ornament as a gift, or family Christmases of long ago.

I organized the ornaments by colour and by theme, because my sister-in-law comes every year to decorate two trees for us. Not with us - for us. She does a beautiful job and all I have to do is agree on a colour scheme and find the decorations for it. My husband helps her and I sit back, sip coffee and enjoy watching them. All she asks is that we try to keep the decorations somewhat organized so that her job is a bit easier. As it is, she is here for almost 8 hours decorating!

Because I love my labeller and buying storage tubs (which I've talked about before on this blog) I decided this year that the time had come. There are enough decorations not including the 40 or so new ones I just bought last week, to deserve some organization. What fun I had!

This year's tree is going to be done in sage green and ivory with burgundy as a splash of colour contrast. I can't wait to start sipping my Tim Horton's while hubby and his sister do the work. I know how impressed my sister-in-law will be with my organization, and it just might spur me on to buy even more decorations after Christmas when they go on sale.

I ended up with 3 huge tubs, one for purple, one for green, one for the neutrals (ivory, white, grey, silver and gold) and several smaller tubs - one for red decorations, one for "must put on tree each year" which are decorations from my childhood or made by my children or gifts from friends and family, one for kids decorations for their little tree, one for miscellaneous sets in assorted colours, and one labelled "winged creatures" which are birds, dragonflies, butterflies - you get the idea - anything with wings.

Then I sorted all the garlands and ribbons and so on and put them all in a tub. Next came tags and wrapping paper and ribbons for presents - that took 2 more tubs. By the time I finished, I had a total of 9 large tubs representing Christmas memories.

Now if only I had somewhere to store them....