Decorations on a budget

When we first got out our Christmas decorations this year, I had a slight panic. You see, our new house is quite a bit bigger than our cute little cottage was. I knew exactly where my decorations went at the old house. I always put white lights on the picket fences in the corners of the yard. The tree had a standard home. I did silver balls in the dining room. It helps that there were really only 3 rooms I could decorate. Much less overwhelming. All of a sudden I have a much bigger house to decorate, but the same amount of decorations. I wasn't sure how I was going to make the house look festive, using only what we had. Many, many material things have been put into perspective this year, and now I can add Christmas decorations to the list. When you are saving for an adoption, suddenly, how many and what kind of decorations you have just really doesn't matter. The slight meltdown/panic came on because I really like to decorate. I like to surround myself with pretty things. But, I am also immensely cheap. Like I said, it was only a slight panic. Once I put my mind to it, I have been able to decorate quite nicely without spending money on anything but the tree (which we do every year). I am so thankful for a healthy dose of creativity that sometimes drives me crazy, but many times is exactly what I need. I am also quite thankful for Flickr and all the great ideas that can be found there. You will have to forgive the quality of these pictures. The lack of sunlight is not helping with the photo taking attempts. I am unable to get a decent photo of the silver snowflake garland in the dining room and school room doors, but you will just have to trust me that it looks great.

I sewed fabric that I had in my stash into star shapes with some batting in the middle. Cut the edges with pinking shears. Used a large eyed needle to thread some shear ribbon through and hung 1 on each spindle on the stair case. We also hung the stockings with ribbon from the stair case. Emma did the tying, she said it was good practice.

The tree found a good home next to the window seat and in front of one of the glass doors, so it reflects nicely.

The wreaths are my favorite! I have really wanted star shaped wreaths after seeing them in a pottery barn catalog a couple of years ago. Being CHEAP, I wouldn't buy them, so I had been searching for a star shaped wreath form and have been unable to find any. As I was trying to figure out what to do outside the house, I realized that the star shaped wreaths that I have been longing for would look even better on this house than they would have at the other. So I set my mind to figuring out how to make them. We always get extra pine boughs when we go get our tree so I had plenty of that to work with. I just needed a base to wire the boughs to. I spent some time looking for sticks that would work and came up empty. Then I saw the stash of utility flags that the children had hidden behind the couch. When we moved in we had the utility guys come and mark all the line so that in my mad gardening frenzies, I wouldn't kill myself or blow up the neighborhood. After I had taken pictures of where the flags were, I told the girls they could have them. They used them all summer for such things as marking where they had planted their dandelion seeds and pretending to land on the moon. So now I reclaimed them and used the sturdy wires that the flags are attached to to make star shaped wreath forms. I wired the greens on, snuck some lights in there and ta-da!
We had intended to put lights on 1 of the trees down by the river so that they could reflect off the river and make me exceedingly happy and also had intended to put more greens around, but alas, the every other day snow/ice pattern that we have been in has prevented further decorating. I guess there is always next year. I keep telling myself that snow is a free decoration and who need icicle lights when there are real icicles?

Bird Watching

The front view of the new house. I love it!

I noticed some bird nests this morning on the top of the corner posts of the big front porch.

There is a finch family on one post and a mourning dove family on the other. The papa mourning dove is stupid evidently and flew to the wrong nest where he was quite quickly and effectively attacked by both mama and papa finch. He finally realized that he was wrong and flew to the other post where mama mourning dove appeared to be in the middle of laying her eggs. He immediately started pecking at her and seemed to just be annoying her. The girls were watching part of all of these antics with me. At lunch, I was telling Curt about the silly birds and I got to the part where the papa mourning dove was pecking at the mama (annoying her) and Emma speaks up and says..."I don't think he was pecking her, I think he was helping make the hole where the eggs come out of her a little bigger." While she is saying this she is picking up one "cheek" and pointing down there. I laughed so hard I cried and Emma says, "What? I am pretty sure that is what he was doing."