Decorating is Coming Along...Continued

 I made the Nativity set.  I bought the greenware at 50% off after Christmas one year and shared the expense of the paint with a friend who made the same set.  I went together with another friend and taught a ceramics class for an adult education class so I could use the art department's kiln to fire all of our stuff.  I've had it for over 30 years now and I still love it.  I've moved it every time we moved and haven't broken anything...yet.

This is an artificial tree but I'm not allergic to it.  In Germany we could get a Nordheim (maybe that is spelled right) tree, real, and I wasn't allergic to that kind.  I love big trees.  The kids and I would pick out a tree and Larry would always have to cut it off to get it to fit inside...even when we lived in an old house with a really high ceiling. One year Larry said he was going to go with us to pick it out because he was tired of having to cut it off to get it inside.  We were all upset.  Our youngest said if we were going to get a small tree, we might as well decorate a lampshade.  Anyway, he picked out one.  When he went to get the station wagon, I gave the man more money and got a bigger one.  When we got it home, he was very bewildered.  He kept saying, "I thought sure I wouldn't have to cut it off."  I said, "It happens to me every year.  It looks short with the sky above it."  It was several years before I told him I'd changed trees.

 Our pyramid is lovely.  We don't always light all the candles because it spins really fast.  I also like the hand-blown glass balls we got in Germany.  In a couple of houses we lived in, we had glass walls...the thick kind that let in light but nothing else.  We'd hang a bunch of these in front of that...really pretty.  We don't have a good place to hang them here.

 I made this ceramic Christmas village, too.  I scratched through the windows so I can put tea candles or lights inside.  I haven't done it so far this year.  But I enjoyed doing it and have enjoyed having it.

 This little house is one of the first things we bought for Christmas.  We could not afford it and bought it anyway.

 We got our gorgeous door wreath twi years ago at an after Christmas sale at a florist.

More glass balls, more ceramic stuff I did.  Notice the candy striped candle.

I'm not through decorating, but I like how it's coming. It seems like a waste of time to decorate when nobody is going to be here for Christmas.  But if I don't decorate, it feels like we don't have Christmas.  Ho Ho Ho