Memorable Decorations

Today marks the start of the 12 Days of Christmas blog party!

Come with me, I'd like to take you on a tour through our house.  Our Christmas decorations are put up, and there are some specific ones that I'd like to show you, each with a special meaning or memory. (And thanks to Kara for taking most of these pics!)

First stop is the front yard.  Looking at the house, you'll see a tree covered in lights, and then a star of lights on top of the house.  That star has been on the house every winter pretty much as long as I can remember.  But once upon a time, Mom really wanted lights on the house, and one year Daddy suddenly surprised her with a homemade star.  You can see it from a couple miles away, and it's certainly a major part of our Christmas decorations.

Next stop: front room.   Remember the Christmas tree that I mentioned?  If you turn to the right after entering the front door, you'll find that tree, laden with lights, garland and ornaments.  Have I mentioned that handmade gifts are kind of a thing around here?  Kordell made mom a box of cutout western (western decor is Mom's favorite) ornaments—bull heads, horseshoes, cowboy boots, etc., and Mom then wrote names of Jesus on them.

A few feet from the tree, you'll find Mom's grand piano covered with a ceramic village.  This village has been collected over the years, with my grandma adding to it every year for quite a long time.  It's probably the decoration us kids enjoyed putting up the most when we were little.

Next to the piano, you'll find a short chest of drawers with this nativity on it.  Us kids had our own nativity scene that we were allowed to put up ourselves.  I don't know how many pieces have been hot-glued (have I ever mentioned that hot glue is another of this family's specialties?) back together again.  So if we got to put up Mom's good brown nativity, man, we were privileged! (If you look closely, you can see that the angel's wing has been glued together... yes, we did mess up sometimes)

On a second chest of drawers around the corner lies this nativity calendar.  On each day of December, counting down to Christmas, you open one of the little doors and pull out an item to stick on the scene.  I remember calculating the number of days to see which of us siblings got to open baby Jesus on Christmas Eve.  We alternated every year, even though we argued about it every year.

These two characters are found pretty much anywhere in the house.  Pushing the yellow sticker on the mouse's foot presses a button that activates it to start dancing and playing its guitar and singing Jingle Bell Rock.  Santa has a switch to turn him on, and once that switch is flipped, he sings Jingle Bells any time he senses a loud noise, or when someone taps him.  These two guys were the best white elephant gifts ever!

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Everyone has their favorite Christmas decorations and memories.  What are some of yours?

Also, don't forget to check out Faith's blog for all the links to the other participants in the blog party!  (Also, there's an epic-looking giveaway going on with all sorts of epic stuff like books and music and I don't even know what else.)