pauses&clicks

Like many houses throughout the world, my home has been undergoing a transformation this past week.  I’ve not pulled out all my Christmas decorations in several years due to travel and putting a house on the market but this year we’re settled in our new house and our grandchildren will be here so no surface is safe!

All of it makes me smile….remembering my mom….who used to put red velvet bows everywhere she could.  We used to joke that it was entirely possible for Dad to wake up from falling asleep in his recliner, paper still open and unread in his lap, to find a bow taped to his forehead.

Decorating the tree is probably my least favorite job but truth be told, each ornament collected from all the bases we lived on, the cities and countries we’ve traveled to, loving handcrafted over the years or received from friends and family….they all elicit wonderful memories.  From the ones I embroidered while I sat in an apartment out in California, so very far from what I knew of Christmas in Ohio, to the skydiving Santa, to the few I still have with pictures of the boys when they were little, all of them tell a story.

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Xavier wasn’t exactly a lot of help last night, falling asleep right in front of the tree, snoring loudly and not moving a muscle as I worked around him.

There’s still much to be done both inside and out.  I haven’t yet opened the box that contains all my Santa ornaments for my second tree, nor have I hung garland, lights or outside wreaths, but my all of my Santas are out and I’ve found all but one Nativity.

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It’s 70 degrees outside but inside I’m creating my own woodland Christmas and I might also be dreaming of a white one.

Oh, and that second transformation?  It’s been slow in coming this time but I discovered something when we returned home from our trip to North Carolina for Thanksgiving.  It seems in all the leaving and returning that we’ve done since moving to Louisiana almost a year ago, it’s finally starting to feel like home.

Sometimes you have to leave a place enough times and then return for that shift to take place.

Wouldn’t that look awesome with a red velvet bow on it?!