Days 7-8: Christmas Decorations

Before we had children, B and I never bothered about Christmas decorations. Our two US Christmases were spent away from home, so we enjoyed other peoples' decorations. Or, in 2005, we enjoyed Mother Nature's:

Maroon Bells, from Aspen Highlands (if you look closely there is a ski sign in the bottom right corner). It was an awesome day for skiing- and apart from a few probably-Jewish families, we had the ski fields almost to ourselves. Who needs turkey?

Now that we share our family with certain people with a vested interest in Christmas, we've started to decorate a bit. Of course there are important receptacles to be hung by the chimney with care:

And the all-important tree. Last year we had a plastic one (with built in fibre optic lights, no less!) given to us which, amongst post-Sweden craziness I decided "would do". But... it wasn't quite me. I had grown up with a living Christmas tree- the perennial sort, in a pot- so I had been keen to go down that path. After realising Sunday afternoons in December aren't a good time to look for a tree any bigger than your hand, we found a specimen about a metre tall- just right for little people to decorate.

As we decorated, Big Bro enthusiastically wanted "more!" but thankfully listened to the principle of "less is more". I managed to keep the tree to our meaningful ornaments- mostly things we've collected on our travels.

There are a few Swedish mementos, like the Dalarna horses, the glass balls we saw being blown at Skansen, and the stockings, and a gold Aspen leaf, to remind us of our Aspen Christmas.

---------------------

On the topic of trees, you can donate a tree to the Murray Darling through Carbon Catchers. For $8.80 you receive GPS coordinates for your tree, and can follow its progress for the next 30 years.