Woodstone Prairie

It’s a beautiful snowy day here… It snowed hard for most of the morning, although it seems to have stopped now.

 I spoke to Granny on the phone this morning and she asked if we’d gotten the house decorated for Christmas yet…  We don’t do a lot of decorating, but since neither she nor my brother Steve have ever been here I thought I’d open up the place for a little ”Christmas tour”.

 We’ll start at the road the runs by in front of the house….

Here’s our little “homestead”, it looks Christmas-y all dressed in white, doesn’t it?

You can see a few of the still-falling snowflakes in this picture….

… and if you look off to your left you’ll see the barn (and our nosey animals!).

The mantle is decorated with evergreen branches and lights….

… and my favorite creche is in it’s regular spot by the window.

It probably shouldn’t count as a Christmas decoration though. I love it so much I leave it out all year.

Look at the detail… isn’t it beautiful?

The Christmas tree sits in it’s corner of the living room. (Oops…I should have moved the pitcher of water/corn syrup/bleach that I’ve been watering it with.)

I love our decorations… None of them are fancy or “matching” in any way, but each of them have memories connected to them.

I have a few very old ones that were my parents, and grandparents, and I have many that the kids have picked out. (As they are growing up, each year each of the kids gets to pick out one new ornament for the tree. We label it with their name and the year, and when they grow up they take those ornaments with them… for their tree.) I also have many homemade ornaments.

Like this one made by dd#1 who will turn 28 next month. She was about 7 here…

Yes, that’s a pine cone fish hanging next to it. Those fish were a craft project that M, R and I did one year. They may not be beautiful, but they’re unique!

Here’s DD#3 at about 4….  She’ll be graduating college in the spring.

Here is M shortly after he came to us. If you look closely you can see the dark welt on his forehead… He had no balance at all then and spent his first few years crashing head first into things!

M and R…  he’s about 7, she’s about 3.

Our tree topper is very special to us… It was given to us by my youngest brother shortly after Joe and I got married. It’s been on our tree every year since then…

Just below it (occupying a place of honor at the top of the tree) is an ornament my brother Steve made for me in the ’70’s out of shrinky dink plastic. It’s a picture of the VW bug I had then…  This ornament also hasn’t missed a Christmas in 30 years!

We put up a second tree this year… a tiny one for Joe’s fish ornaments. Almost every year we find a fish ornament to give him (because he loves drowning worms fishing so much…). This year we gave him not only a fish ornament, but a little tree to put them on too.

Well… that’s it for the tour. You’re welcome to leave donations in the jar by the door on your way out.

Stay warm… drive safely!