Something old, Something new.

I can't recreate the look of my house.  I don't mean the one I live in now, but rather the first house I bought with my then-husband, the house we raised our two children in.  It was a pretty big house, built in the 50's, but large and modern, even by today's standards.  Since I love mid-century style, the raised hearth, flat roof and slate tile was extremely appealing to me, even though the house in general came to need a lot of work/money invested in it to really make it great.  I did what I could, painting, rearranging and working hard on that half-acre plot of land.  Much of it I did by myself, or with the help of my sister.  I kind of loved that house, especially at Christmas.  




























I decorated EVERY room.  I had my staff over at Christmas a few times, and they said it was pretty much sensory overload.  Collections were everywhere:  Trees, Santas, snowmen, nutcrackers and more recently, cardinals.  The bathroom, bedrooms, kitchen, even the basement, got some love.  Lights, wreaths...I had a closet in the basement dedicated to all things Christmas.  About 10 bins in all, plus the large items that wouldn't fit.  Two trees, sometimes three.  Yep.  Seeing these pictures reminds me of things I had to let go, things I forgot about, and things I had to give away when the second storage unit couldn't hold any more.  It also reminds me that I had a crappy camera back then. 

I moved into a beautiful apartment for one year, and was able to decorate it in such a way that it really took my breath away every time I entered it.  I have some great pictures to show for it since there really wasn't a way to take a bad picture of this room:  

I refer back to this picture a lot, but I think I'll retire it after this year.  Overall, living there wasn't a good experience and by the end of that year, I was more than ready to move.  Not finding a place right away, I spent about six months living with my mom and sister, and while being all together had it's good points my little family needed our own home.  We spent Christmas there and in the spring we found a small three bedroom house and we're settled in and loving it.  Trying to recreate the look and feel of my previous homes is futile.  This is a completely different style, different feel, and different people live in it.  My chubby-faced ten year old is now a senior in high school.  My sixteen year old is a career girl working on a Masters' degree.  It's still very important to me that they have a spectacular Christmas, limited funds notwithstanding.  As of yet there are no gifts under the tree, but the cabinets are full of the makings for cookies, white chocolate coated pretzels, a gingerbread house and my "famous" hot chocolate.  No matter how old they get (so far) we all still look forward to going downtown on the train, eating roasted chestnuts at the Christkindlmarket, reading the entire story in the windows at Macy's and taking pictures by the big tree.  

And we do a little decorating too:

Bigger tree!

No fireplace so we're faking it.

The one new piece of furniture I bought after I moved into the apartment. 

I framed this greeting card many years ago.

I got this from a little girl a long time ago.  It looks exactly the same
no matter where I hang it.

I have had this basket of Christmas junk on the kitchen counter
for years.  Ornament hangers, candles, socks, stickers...
stuff I might need.  I'm a junk drawer junkie.

Kicking myself over the big snowman I left at the apartment.
I still don't know why I decided to leave it.

I regret giving away so many things when I was super emotional and nearly despondent about being "homeless".  I regret that my children ended up being from a "broken" home which I tried hard for 18 years to avoid.  I sometimes regret the choice of "Olive Oil Yellow" for my kitchen walls.  But I'll never regret one extra trip up that ladder to rearrange the penguins and snowmen on top of the cabinets or another little turn of  a nutcracker to angle him just so on the shelf.  I'm far from satisfied with it right now but it will come together.  In the meantime, we're perfectly happy to carry on our old traditions in a new space and nothing more needs to be done for that to happen.