My Christmas Decorating Experience

I love Christmas, the whole Christmas season! I love the music. I love the magic. I love time spent with loved ones. I love giving. I love cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies (regular Christmas movies are pretty good too). I love the traditions. I love the decorations!

One of our Christmas traditions is decorating the house the last weekend in November. Decorating day is a much anticipated event around here, only third in line after Christmas Day and the day the scout elves arrive. This year I live tweeted the momentous event.

How it Started

I began my story by setting the scene. The first step is dragging all the decorations upstairs from the storage room in the basement and cleaning the area to prepare it. There was lots of excitement and my elves were eager to help! The first few hours were filled with lots of teamwork, stories of our favorite ornaments and Christmas’ past. Each year we each buy a new Hallmark ornament so they are all special and all have their own unique story. Then things started to get a little dicey.

My ‘type A personality’ started to kick in and I was doing my best to keep my composure but the elves ornament placement didn’t quite have the same vision as I did. I decided to look past it (or rather I had decided that I would make adjustments once the elves were asleep!) and turn my attention to the mess of ornament packaging. A few disagreements ensued between the elves because one wouldn’t share with the other and feelings were hurt. I had my doubts if we were going to be able to complete the decorating in one night. My momma intuition kicked in and figured they were hangry elves that needed to eat. While most elves food consists of “candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup”, according to Buddy the elf, we decided to order pizza. With fully bellies and tired bodies the Prep and Landing TV short made its way onto the television and I knew this had become a solo mission.

How it’s Going

I will admit at this point I was feeling a little hopeless. The house was a mess, there was boxes and decorations half put together all over the place, I knew I needed help. So I called in a couple of reinforcements named Innis & Gunn. They really helped encourage me to keep going. And little by little things started to come together. First, Santa’s village was completed with only one casualty. He’s still in decoration hospital but he’s expected to make a full recovery. Then the mantle above the fireplace took shape. It took a long time to put together. I am so grateful for those temporary 3M hooks. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to hang the stockings or keep the garland in place.

How it Ended

Completion of that gave me the motivation to get the last of the decorating completed. The half dressed tree the elves had started was my last assignment. I added more ornaments, mostly the round shinny kind and placed the tree topper, an angel. It was late, my feet were aching and my eyes were burning. It had been a long day but it was sure nice to sit back and enjoy all the work we put into decorating the house.