A touch of glitter

In spite of all the sadness in the family with the very recent death of my sister-in-law, Linda, who absolutely loved Christmas, there were three little granddaughters coming for Christmas, so I gathered myself together, banished the blues, and went for a pale green, sliver and glittered theme for this year's Christmas decor to dazzle the little ones.

Inspiring the theme are these vintage ornaments which were given to me by a church friend, Merle Houk, about fifteen years ago.  They are packaged in their original boxes which are aging much more quickly than the ornaments themselves.  I believe these ornaments are about fifty years old.

Several have broken over the years, two of them when our adopted cat climbed the tree and it fell over.  What a mess!  We have since learned to wire the tree to one of the ceiling beams. These ornaments are very fragile, unlike the ornaments today made of plastic.  There are boxes of pink ones as well, which I have used in the past with burgundy.  But this year, those are staying in their boxes waiting for another turn some year.

A number of years ago, I purchased 8 and a half yards of this fabric at a yard sale for $.50 a yard.

What a steal.  It has served as a backdrop (looped through a crown) for the head table at Hogwarts, as a magical tent with white lights for an Arabian Night party, and now I have cut some of it off to add some color to the table.  We live a long way from town, so, having no thread this color, I unraveled some from the fabric to hem the squares.  Since each piece was only about a yard long, I rewound the bobbin about ten times!

Here it is on the tables at church for our Celebrities Christmas Luncheon...

And here it is again back home on my dining table.

The chandeliers are hung with glass silver pine cones, icicles (from my favorite home decor shop in Santa Fe) and my favorite Christmas ornaments of all, two lovely stars created in leaded glass by my sister-in-law, Carolyn.

The topiary style trees are painted cardboard cones which I glittered and elevated on upside down margarita glasses to created some interesting height.

Because that same darn cat knocked over and shattered one of my two mercury glass trees, I secured the plates with double sided mounting tape, so that my grandmother's Haviland china would not meet the same demise.

As life-long Episcopalians, we do not begin to decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving but usually wait until almost the end of Advent, so our tree has only been up since Christmas Eve.  Tomorrow we celebrate Epiphany and the end of the Christmas holidays but I may leave the tree up for a few more days to enjoy the lights and sparkle.  Because we cut the tree on our land the day we put it up, it is still fresh, green, and smelling wonderful.  I promise, however, it will not still be up for Valentine's Day!