Christmas 3

What a great day. Very quiet, uneventful and restful for my first day of holidays. I spent the day putting up the tree and decorations. I put on some christmas movies and just took my time enjoying it all. It's always interesting how we/I forget some of the things that I've packed away from the year before. The older decorations I remember, but the new ones,well. So, my tree is up and looking resplendant all decked out in the pretties. Growing up with European traditions was wonderful because it gave me a different way of doing things compared to everyone else. One of the traditions is to always decorate the tree with birds as birds are thought to bring good luck, so each year I add more (one can never have to much good luck). This red bird is a modern day addition to my collection. The scarlet coloured bird is a glass ornament. It is as light as air and has to be handled ever so carefully, and they add so much to my tree.

Another traditional thing was to decorate with hand blown glass ornaments. So absolutely fragile, but so pretty. I usually take a please don't touch approach to those ornaments, just because they are so fragile. This first one is to most people not so fancy, but it's one of the few I have left from my childhood. The purple one is a new one from last year. There is a shop here called the Christmas Store, and it is run by a German family and it's open all year. I could spend days in there and still not see it all. There are floors and floors of christmas decorations representing all parts of the world. It's truly a place to be for those of you who love this season all year. Here is the tree all finished. Below the tree are some boxes to show you and another tradition if you will, but I will save that for the next post....so until then.