Christmas Decorating Holds Memories

The little girl mouse in bed (left) was a $1.99 purchase in Christmas 2015 with a dear friend.

Christmas Decorating Holds Memories

Thanksgiving weekend is Christmas decorating time at my house. With the long weekend, I can pull out the boxes of decorations and enjoy spreading them throughout my house to bring a holiday theme into each room.

Much like gardening, I like my holiday decorating quick, easy and memorable. I had several small, pre-decorated Christmas trees in plastic totes that could easily spring up on my office desk or a coffee table; favorite handmade Santa dolls from cutter quilts, and some German figurines my mother brought back from Germany in 1948, years before I was born. 

As I was looking for the totes, I realized they were gone, part of a stash someone who worked for me stole mid-summer. She pled guilty to the burglary mid-November but I had not missed the totes because they were in a storage area where she had stolen other, more obvious items.

They were only "things" but I felt such a feeling of loss and violation - again. I used to enjoy pulling them out, remembering when I got them and what memories they represented; giving them a little tender loving care if they needed it, and setting them out in my rooms. I don't have a lot of decorations but the ones I did have were attached to wonderful memories. It took me a couple of days to mourn the loss and inventory what I still had.

In the process, I remembered I had one little decoration sitting on a project shelf in a closet. I bought it last year for $1.99 with my cat's name sake, my friend Margaret, in St. Louis at the Shop Around the Corner. It's a little girl mouse tucked into a bed to add to my cat-themed stockings hanging from the mantle. One of the feet on the bed was missing so I had glued a little piece of wood in the missing spot and needed to paint it before it was ready to join my fireplace mantle holiday scene. It was still there so I finished the paint job before going through what was left of my holiday decorations.

 Some of my favorite mantle decorations were stolen but as I re-arranged my little holiday scene with what was left, I realized I still have a wonderful collection of good memories, and there is always room to add a few more.

Charlotte