A Collector’s Christmas

I love Christmas decorating since I get to reconnect with our Christmas collections and traditions.  One of my recent traditions is to go on internet blog hops and see all the homes decorated and photographed by professional bloggers. But one of my favorite blog hops is Jennifer Rizzo’s Linky Party which follows her wonderful Holiday Housewalk and often features blogs more like mine with its eclectic decorating and photos taken with a phone. With just a desire to share my home with others, and no hope of being selected for next year’s blog hop (one of the reasons people join the linky party), I am linking to Jennifer Rizzo’s Linky Party.

We started our Christmas decorating this year by finding a new place for the Advent Calendar. The space between the china cabinet and the bench is usually empty so we were able to use command hooks to hang the Advent Calendar, the cross stitch hanging, and the stockings. So much easier than in our old condo where we replaced the regular pictures.

We moved the small bookcase that is usually on the other side of the room where the Christmas tree will go and filled it with small villages.

The one on the top is from Germany and belonged to my mother. The animals from that village are on the middle of the next shelf (they wouldn’t stand up in the “snow”) flanked by some alpine cottages from The Christmas Tree Shop.

Cats are not kind to trains that move around under a tree so what is left of the train I bought to go under the tree when we lived in Denver sits on the third shelf along with its village, from my husband’s mother’s ceramic store, that I painted many years ago. The bottom shelf, available for grandchild play, holds a wooden village and a wooden nativity set.

The Advent Calendar used to hold presents for our daughters wrapped in green and red tissue paper. They get those packages delivered to their homes now and we tie red bows on the calendar. We take turns removing a ribbon and tying the bow around one of the small pieces that adorn our shelves year round. Then the other one has to find it – easy at first but it gets harder as the month goes on to remember what did and didn’t have ribbons. One of the first ribbons appeared on the neck of the gourd crane below. The wooden bird facing him and one of the alligators on the shelf above also have bows now.

The door of the 24th on the paper German Advent Calendars we had when I was a child always opened to reveal a Nativity. We continue that tradition so we have a lot of Nativities. Some hang on the tree and this year the shelf ones are displayed on the top of the China cabinet along with a few larger ones.

We are always excited to add to our collections. This year we found a copper pan ornament at World Market for our kitchen Christmas collection that hangs under our cabinets and numbers over thirty pieces now.

Some of other collections also end up in the same places each year including the small Santa and Snowpeople collections that are always displayed on the speakers.

And some collections get displayed differently each year. This year most of the gnomes congregated together on one of the CD cases (the one with all the Christmas music!) I love the gnome printable from the Clean and Scentsible blog which I also printed out for some gnome collecting friends.

https://www.cleanandscentsible.com/gnome-free-christmas-printable/

Our new sideboard is a great place to display many of our reindeer and the Saint Lucia I created from an angel tree topper many years ago.

In 1990 my sister in law began making “one block quilts” as Christmas ornaments for gifts for family and a few friends. She makes around 25 each year! We hang the smaller ones from the first few years on our tree and we hang the rest together. As this collection keeps growing we keep finding new places to display them.

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is making something new for our windows. Our large windows called out for large snowflakes this year.

Each snowflake is made up of six pieces made with the Martha Stewart “Party Crafting Template”. I purchased it several years ago and used it that year to make make many ornaments with double sided foil paper. Hung separately each one twists beautifully. Attached together they make these large snowflakes.

We put our German Christmas Market mugs on the ledge of the dining room section of windows.

The last one on the right is from this year’s Chicago Christmas Market. The ones on the left (below) are from the year I went on a Christmas Market Tour in Germany.

Our old condo had a kitchen window above the sink and we hung a garland above it. I usually hung crafted ornaments on the garland that I gave to people who visited throughout the season. I thought we couldn’t continue this tradition until I was reading a blog that mentioned someone who just pretended at Christmas that they had a window above their sink. Aha!

I was inspired by a blog or pin I can’t find again to make the patchwork wood slice ornaments and the skis also come from the Clean and Scentsible blog.

https://www.cleanandscentsible.com/popsicle-stick-skis-christmas-ornaments/

We haven’t put up our Christmas tree yet as we usually do that around the 15th but we did put up our Children’s Book and Movie Characters tree in our workroom. I can’t get a good photo of the whole tree. The quote attributed to Albert Einstein on the top of the fairy whose head didn’t make it into the photo says, “If you want your children to be bright, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be brilliant, read them even more fairy tales.”

In addition to Pippi, Madeline, and Anna and Elsa pictured here, the tree contains many more ornaments including the Wizard of Oz characters from both the movie and book versions. This year since I took my grandchildren to see Shrek the Musical, I wanted to find a Shrek ornament. I was happy to find a Shrek figure to stand underneath with Peter Pan and Captain Hook, Wonder Woman, three princesses and Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf.

When we moved here there wasn’t room for all the mermaids we had hanging in our upstairs bathroom so I thought the left over ones deserved a tree this year.

Now I can’t wait to decorate our live tree with all its collections!