I love Christmas. Mostly because of the food. And the decorations. The lights. The anticipation. The sweet times of fellowship. Ok ok, I pretty much love it all. Except for the stress part. Yeah. That part, not so much. But I’m slowly learning that the stress part of Christmas is only as bad as my inability to say “no” is. Also only as bad as my ability to delegate. This year we’ve combined some “Thanks for the invitation but no thanks” with some good old fashioned delegation and our season is off to a simply marvelous start.

Since I was overwhelmed by the thought of trying to do mostly homemade tree decorations mostly all by my lonesome I decided to have a household decorating party. Several dear friends and my Mother in Law came over and we had a great time.

Our house is now decked thanks to post Christmas clearance deals last year and hand-me-down Christmas decorations from family.

Strings of Popcorn were a must. Our dear friend Andi faithfully stringing away!

Andi Stringing Popcorn

Stringing Popcorn can be tedious so some livening up is a must!

See??

Popcorn Fun

The first layer...lights!

Then came the popcorn strands and the Paper Chains made from last year’s leftover Wrapping Paper scraps.

Decorating the tree with popcorn and paperchains

Admiring the work done thus far

Never having had a tree before I of course did not have a tree-topper. Loath to spend money on something extra when something I had could be made to work I scrounged around and came up with the purple metal angel designed to shine with a beautiful light when lit from within by a tea-light. My ever resourceful brother BigJohn rigged said angel to hang from her halo since she of course had no means of adorning the top of the tree anyway.

Angel Hovering courtesy of her Halo

Our random assortment of ornaments.

Once the tree and other misc. decorations were finished the rest of the evening was spent in fellowship, games and live music! Times like these remind me how incredibly blessed our lives are in the most important of ways. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year holds for us! I hope it has some more evenings spent like this one.