Tender Tennessee Christmas Greetings!
Today, at last, Christmas begins at our house. Don decided the season of Thanksgiving and Christmas was the perfect time to paint half the house, despite my protests. The new sewing studio was dismantled to make way for new paint (a yummy butter yellow that unfortunately looks a bit pale in the picture), and today it was finally reinstalled. I am at peace at last!
The little tree is in place, looking smaller than usual because I opted to place it in our den for the first time. To put it in our living room requires a bit of furniture rearrangement, and I've had it with moving ANY more furniture for the time being. This little tree is the upshot of yet another marital struggle, when I defiantly went out and bought a pre-lighted tree I could manage on my own, with no help from Ebeneezer. That was the year I chose quality over quantity and began creating travel theme trees. The children were grown and I no longer felt obliged to cover the tree with their homemade creations, and lovingly passed them on to their homes.
Travel has been the fourth greatest pleasure of my life (you guess #1-3), and I love looking at the mementos and reminders of happy explorations and broadened horizons: Pinocchios from Sienna, Italy; sunflowers, bottles of wine, topiary trees, and clusters of grapes for Provence; mirrored fleur-de-lis for France and Italy; a little glass chandelier for Venice; Scottish bagpipers and Russian eggs and dolls.
I hope each of you recaptures some happy time during the next few days, if only for a few moments. Savor what is good and what is true. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
6 comments:
Your tree is beautiful Jane Ann, and I love the idea of the travel theme. Let's see, I'll bet #s 1-3 are 2 daughters and a grandaughter? I hope you have a Merry Christmas!
Right out of Better Homes and Garden! Lovely with the draperies on each side to frame your tree! I love the doily over the door too.
Merry Christmas, Jane Ann!
I can't wait to see what creative adventures you take in 2006.
I can't wait to see what I do with 2006 either, Debra! With you as ring leader, there's no end to the possibilities.
My house is very red and green so Christmas is usually traditional around here. The doily is one my grandmother made. She was a wonderful crochet artist, not so good with quilting and sewing. The doily is a pineapple pattern, supposedly one that Eleanor Roosevelt made while in the White House. (Wonder if my grandfather knew that--he was a diehard Republican, as were/are most East Tennesseeans. Hated Roosevelt, which is probably what made my mother a Democrat--she could see what the WPA and TVA did for the people of her area and never understood why they wouldn't give the credit to FDR! But I digress, as always.)
Thanks for the kind words and thoughts.
And Pat, you know me well! Merry Christmas to you too, sweetie.
That is a very beautiful tree, Jane Ann. Merry Christmas.
Thanks, ladies. The first time I made a travel tree was really the prettiest. It was 8 feet tall and I put everything I owned that was travel related on it. Small flags that I sometimes stick in flowers for the table if I'm having Italian or French. And I tied all my souvenir Limoges boxes onto the tree, glass "candies" from Venice, brass Eifel towers and the small Corgi (Matchbox) buses, taxis, mail trucks, and street signs I buy in toy shops when I travel. The first meal we ever had in Paris included the most divine butter-soaked white asparagus we have ever tasted, and I even tied together bunches of plastic asparagus from Michael's and hung them on the tree. I'm sure a lot of people don't understand the significance of some of the stuff. But that was a LOT of work, so I pretty much skip that part now and just use true ornaments. I have to say it gives me great enjoyment to look at it and recall certain adventures.
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