The morning is damp and dark, a leftover from last night’s rain, but it is warm, 46°. I’m going to decorate today. I started yesterday by hauling my scrub pine tree from the cellar. I had to do it one step at a time and use both hands to hold it. I was afraid it was an accident waiting to happen but it didn’t. The tree is in the corner of the dining room, its usual spot, and is lit. I put a small tree skirt around the bottom. It grew legs and moved to the kitchen. I wonder how.

The tricky mouse is still on the loose. This morning the trap was empty and still had peanut butter. That mouse is a bugger.

Christmas has always been special to me. That started when I was a kid. I remember sitting at the kitchen table making ornaments. My mother had all the decorations, pipe cleaners, lace, ribbon, do-dads, bottles of Elmer glue and styrofoam balls, on the table. I remember I decorated what I imagined was an angel. Pipe cleaner arms held a small cardboard book of music. I made a halo, also out of a pipe cleaner. A few gems decorated the front. I even added hair made from string. I thought it a masterpiece. It was voted ugliest ornament.

I was good at decorating sugar cookies. My mother made the cookies using aluminum cookies cutters. We had Santa, a reindeer, a bell, an angel and a tree. My mother made the frosting and colored it red and green. She left some white frosting, beard white. There were small, round cinnamon candies for buttons. I remember using a toothpick to put lights on the decorated tree. I got artsy and added frosting string to connect the lights. I had come a long way from the ugly angel.

We made construction paper chains to circle the tree. We cut thin strips of paper, glued each strip to make a circle then glued the circle to the chain. I loved seeing anything I made on the tree. All pride aside, I even used to put my ugly angel on the tree. When I first bought my house, I had very little money left over after paying the mortgage. I did buy a tree that first year, but I had very few ornaments and only a couple of lights strands. I decide to make a construction paper chain. I glued the circles together and put them on the tree. The look looked so festive and colorful. I used to sit in the living room just to look at the tree.

I remember one night. I could hear the sound of paper. When I looked at the tree, I could see of some of the rounds had come apart. The glue hadn’t held. I took the chain off the tree and stapled the rings together and put the chain back on the tree. Disaster avoided.

My hand-made ornaments got better the older I got. I even made ornaments for Christmas gifts. My friends and family loved them. One year my mother gave me my award winning ugly angel. I put that on the tree every year.

This entry was posted on December 10, 2024 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.