The beginning of the Christmas Season in our house

I have been remarkably absent from my blogging for a month as life has been particularly hectic here on our Hill. It's great that we've been busy, but some days I feel as though I don't even have time to take that extra large breath to make sure I have enough oxygen in my system to keep me awake!

So, quite suddenly, December has arrived and with it, Christmas. In an earlier post, I touched on some of our family's Christmas traditions. The first tradition our family has always observed is putting up the Christmas tree. This has to happen on the first FULL weekend in December. So during this last week, I nagged Peter until he got all my boxes of decos down out of the manhole space, then I put together the skeleton of my latest tree - a black wrought iron one! I say my latest tree because I have owned quite a few different ones since the first green plastic one that I inherited from my ex m-i-l! The next one I bought was when the children and I returned to Tasmania to live and I had a bit of cash left over that we spent on various luxuries, including a 6 foot high artificial Christmas tree. Over the next few years, it was lovingly adorned with decorations that I made in cross stitch or beaded felt or crocheted plus the addition each year of the decos made by the children in Day Care then school. We had a single string of fairy lights and a bit of tinsel and it was beautiful in all our eyes! Unfortunately, we lost the lot when we had our house fire (but that's another story!) After that I didn't have the heart to re-make all those handmade beauties and the children were nearly into high school so the decos stopped on that front as well. For the next few years we had a very traditional green tree with red, gold, blue, green and silver baubles - it was a tree with very little heart actually. Then I discovered purple and silver.... much excitement the first year I had a themed Chrissie tree, all purple and silver. In those early years, it was really difficult to find decorations outside the traditional colours - not so nowadays of course.  Seven years ago, I discovered optic fibre trees and I had a white skeletonized one made of wrapped optic fibres, which received mixed reviews from the family. I loved it! After several years of service, it started to look quite tatty so it was 'back to the drawing board' to find a new tree.

So last year and this, it has been the black wrought iron tree. Last year, the purple and silver adorned the tree, but just to added a little extra spice, I've included a bit of red this year. It has certainly brightened the overall perspective. I love my tree, in fact, whatever tree I put up each year, I love my tree! There is something about having the Christmas tree up that puts me in the mood for Christmas to commence. Once I have our tree up and decorated then the festivities may start in full swing.

The last couple of years, as a family, we have decided that the 'gathering' is more important than the gifts, yet we can't give them up completely. My two children and Peter's are both at the stage in life where mortgages and such like are high on the agenda, which means we are all 'as poor as church mice'! So last year My son James and I came up 'with a plan'! At our Christmas gathering we would bring each person a gift who was going to be present. This gift was not to be worth more than $10 and it also had to fit into our Christmas stockings. It is amazing what kinds of useful items can be purchased for less than $10 and be small enough to fit in a Christmas stocking. It is almost more fun and definitely more thought goes into it than when we used to 'lash out' and 'spend up big'! Of course some smarty pants in the family have worked out that if they get together with somebody else they can spend $20 on a joint gift!

I try to complete my shopping by the end of November (my own little tradition) and this year I did and I'm very proud of my efforts! Now all I have to do is wrap them up prettily and add them to each person's stocking. I sorted out all my little Christmas bags, wrapping paper, curling ribbons and tags today as well ready for the day I get enthused enough to 'do the wrapping'!