When it comes to decorating our house for Christmas I have two sides to me that don't make this endeavor easy. On one side, I can't stand clutter. I always seem to be picking something up and asking my family, 'Is this yours? Do you need this? Or, can we donate/recycle/throw away?' (what ever verb fits) It's not that our little house is so streamline that everything matches and is in its proper place. It's just that we do have a little house and a stack of papers, or magazines, suddenly grows to spilling onto the ground and it drives me crazy! So, putting more things around the house doesn't initially appeal to me.
However, when it's the Christmas season the other side of me wants to bring out every red, green, and gold shiny thing I can find and Do.It.Up! Right after Thanksgiving I have plans to have each nook of the house a certain theme. I wish to have one corner be a Snowman theme, one a Santa theme, one area for the nativity and candles. It is so-o-o-o dark in the Pacific Northwest at Christmas time and I want as much light as we can hold.
So here I am, dealing with my desire for clutter free space, and my want for joyful Christmas decorations and lights to surround us. I do it. I get through it. We even host a birthday party for our girls in the middle of it all! (More decorations!) But on the day after Epiphany, the 12th Day of Christmas, (Jan. 6th) it's time for the decorations to be taken down, stored for another year and I get to see my table tops again. The house looks empty, feels colder. I begin to understand those that leave their "collections" around them. Then I see a panic in my husband Rob's eyes, "How long is she going to leave those reindeer on the side-table?"
All right. All right. Down it all comes, packed away in the green and red Rubbermaid containers, until next season. Sometimes the thought of working in a Christmas themed store is very appealing ;->