Holidays past and present

Mom always made Christmas magical.  Even a life time later she still makes them fun and exciting for her great grandchildren!

Growing up within a large family any holiday was a major feat for my mother to get us ready, attend church service with 8 kids in tow, come home to prepare & serve a wonderful meal for us and my father and other family members who would visit, then she got to relax once we all went to bed that holiday night.

Anyone who grew up in the 50's and 60's can tell you our lives where simple and was not unusual for neighbors to have 3 to 15 kids.  In the seventies and eighties family size became 2 or 4 kids.

At Christmas the early years we always had a 'live tree' once grandchildren started appearing within the family my mothers tree became a "Fake Tree.

My tree's were live until we learned my one child had allergies.  Then I became a convert to the artificial trees.

In a way that turned into a problem.  I could put the Tree up the day after Thanksgiving and not take it down until mid January.  Then because I would fall in love each year with the tree and how it was decorated I would leave up to Mid February. Then it became a problem to take it down before the Easter holiday.  One year the tree was exceptional.  It was a dream ~ I put the tree in the library of my Victorian home.  That tree stayed up to Memorial Day.  I would have left it up all year but my family began teasing me as well as the neighbors.  I succumbed to pressure and took my favorite decorating job down.

A couple of years later a divorce followed, the sell of my Victorian home deemed selling and tossing things away. Two years later I move to Alaska.

The move brought about the lost of interest in celebrating and decorating for the holidays.The magic of the tree was gone for various reasons. For a few years I didn't bother with a tree.  Then brought a 5' fake tree and brought out the ornaments and the house once again became a place of magic.

I was happy with the One of a Kind ornaments.  Each one has a different story and range in age from 35 years old to four years old.   I haven't brought new ornaments for a couple of years.

This year I decided to enjoy the 'Christmas fake trees of the past'.  I've brought a 2' silver foil tree.  Tis lovely.  I went with lime green as the major ornament color, with a slash of a few other bright colors.  The larger 5' fake tree hasn't been set up yet, it will follow getting decorated the next couple of days; pictures of the beauty will be up this weekend.

This will sit in the kitchen window, so that as folks drive by the will have a glance of a time when I was a child of 10 and we lived in California that year and my great aunt had two trees, one a silver 6' with the colored light, and my favorite the "pink flocked angel tree".  Both seemed so very magical and different than the 'green' tree's I had seen all my life.  One day I will own a fluffy Ostrich Pink Feather Tree.

Can't wait for the 'after Christmas sales'  because I have my eye on several online sites that had the tree of my dreams for a perfect magical holiday next year.

Covered in Chocolate Catering is available for Holiday Parties in the Anchorage Area.  Visit either of my online selling sites to contact me.