Tag: Decorating

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November 22: Wreath Seeking

The tree is up – all we need now is a Christmas wreath!

Today we’ll go hunting for a new wreath to go on our exterior garage wall and one for the back door. It’s the best way to spend a Saturday – seeking wreaths! We’ll have one of our grandsons along to help, too, and we can’t wait to spend the day with him.

Last year, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we rented a car in Boston to make a loop through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts following the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention I was attending at the time. As we left Kennebunkport, I spotted what I thought was a fruit stand on the side of the road. It looked a lot like where, in my rural Georgia county, we would pull over and buy watermelons or tomatoes. But as we neared, I could see that the people who were gathered around the long tables were not tenderly squeeze-testing tomatoes or thumping watermelons. They were creating fresh wreaths using the greenery stacked in piles on tables behind them.

A wreath-making stand! There is still a part of me deep inside that craves this L.L.Bean-style wreath that is all made of fresh evergreen and so natural and simple that it would rival any wreath that feels the need to proclaim Christmas in any other way than through real live nature, just greenery and berries. So it just might be that we find a wreath frame and some zip ties and twine and wire. It just might so happen that we take our little hacksaw and sharp camping axes and put on our hiking boots and go to the back side of the property and gather evergreens that we cut fresh to put on the frame and make one ourselves, New England style.

It would do my heart a lot of good to make a wreath with our grandson today. But we’ll have to be careful to watch for the elusive lellow bear if we trudge out into the woods. He’s out there somewhere…..

Wreath Seeker’s Haiku

it’s wreath-seeking day

balsams, firs, cedars, spruces

today we seek wreaths

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November Noel No-Nonsense Nonet

I used to laugh at those memes where families come home from trick-or-treating and put up the Christmas tree. I used to remind myself to give the turkey its day in the spotlight. I’ll admit it: I used to judge those folks, those ridiculous early decorators.

No, no, no, no, no! Not anymore.

The older I get, the more I realize I need to pace myself in decorating. It takes moving a chair to make a space for a tree, unboxing the Nativity set, and spinning a fresh bow for the year-round wreath on the east-facing front door (I love the way it frames the early morning sunrise through the door glass from my living room chair). If my husband and I are going to do all this decorating in our sixties, we need time to recover and to enjoy it before it’s time to take it all down again.

I’m firmly in the camp that if I’m putting it up, I want six to eight weeks to enjoy it. Anything less is too taxing on this body.

There have been years we didn’t decorate at all – – those years we went places and knew no one would be here to celebrate since we’d be in others’ homes in other states. But as grandchildren visit and we gather with friends and other family who often come on different weekends between now and the first of the year, we’ve come to understand those silly home-from-Halloween-now-let’s-put-up-the-tree memes.

Even though we decorate simply and minimally in the quiet shades of nature when we do, we realize it’s all about creating a Christmas ambiance that welcomes visitors who drop in anytime during the holidays. A simple burlap and twig tree, a box shrub wreath, a Nativity set and we’ll be ready to welcome the season. Come see us!

November Noel No-Nonsense Nonet

the older we get, the more we see

we need to decorate early

to recover from the work

(pacing is not enough)

dare I admit that

our Christmas tree

is going

up this

week????

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for providing teachers a space to write and share

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It All Started with Cookies

I was scrolling through Pinterest and Facebook for table refinishing ideas in December when I came across these Christmas cookies. The color scheme was perfect! We’ve been doing some upgrades to paint and furniture here and there recently, and I knew when I saw the cookies that I’d found the basic colors and inspiration colors that I’d been seeking.

Imagine that! Finding a color scheme in cookies. 

The past couple of Colors of the Year include Evergreen Fog and Blank Canvas – both of which are variations in this collective scheme. We’d used a green and white in our master bedroom, and the nightstands needed a makeover from the 1980s whitewashed pine look. Everything has been everywhere as we have been cleaning up, cleaning out, and recovering pieces, but here is the before picture of one of our two matching nightstands, below.

A quick few coats of chalk paint in Swiss Coffee (Behr) for the base and Evergreen Fog (Sherwin Williams) for the knobs and feet turned out just like I’d envisioned these pieces for a room-brightening change. 

I’ve applied the sealing wax, which won’t be completely cured for 2 weeks but enough for initial use after 24 hours. We can’t wait to have a place for our bedside lamps once again!

Next on the list is a chest of drawers in our guest bedroom, where the color scheme includes gray and black. That will be for another day – – meanwhile, I’ll be looking for some new paint colors on the cookie pages.