Between the busy high school football playoff schedule and Thanksgiving preparations and family time, somehow we managed to downsize my mom’s Christmas decoration collection.
What started as roughly 80 boxes worth of knick-knacks and various holiday ornaments ended up in the 60-ish box ballpark.
I’m not sure of the exact count because we put some away in the middle of the week and I’ve since forgotten how many they numbered.
The good news is that we separated all of the ornament balls by color and possible themes so we don’t have to bring every box back down out of the attic next year or when we put up the decorations we’re using now.
The bad news is that we didn’t get to all of our project or “rehabilitation” pieces – namely a few garlands and wreaths that needed some TLC.
We actually formed our own triage trauma center and dubbed out breakfast bar as the “Medical Tent” space.
I’m sure it would have been something much cuter or adorable to stage when we were kids.
I spent the majority of my time super-gluing certain parts and pieces back on several decorations.
I’m talking about everything from gluing down a nutcracker’s head or an arm that fell off to removing broken light bulbs from string lights and repairing missing ornament ball finials.
As I write this column there are still a few stragglers in the medical tent that need specialized care and more attention to detail than I’m capable of giving on a tight newspaper deadline I mentioned previously that we changed Christmas tree themes this year and that choice has run into its own mishaps, too.
Firstly, someone or something damaged the power cord for mom’s flocked tree and after contacting the company, we found out that she was out of her warranty period.
But, we lucked out when they opted to send us another cord anyway – as a “courtesy” – even though it took almost a full week to arrive.
Despite that, mom had a plan and goal to have our indoor decorations done by the end of the Thanksgiving break and we surged full-steam ahead on making that happen.
That left me as the super glue surgeon and my sister helped handle the other decorations until we came to a pause to delve into holiday baking as a sweeter distraction.
After covering football Friday night, I stepped in to continue our foray into cherished childhood ornaments for the kitchen tree this year also led to several other discoveries.
Not only had mom mixed up a handful of ornaments between my sister and I – but she’d also managed to save some ornaments and decorations we had made in elementary school.
Granted the paper was faded and brittle, but the items were still legible and brought back semi-foggy memories from decades ago.
Even then, seeing the items impacted mom more than us because she ended up crying when we showed them off to her.
It was a little unnerving to see her crying over handmade school decorations from the 1990s and early 2000s, but we ended up putting them on the small fiber-optic tree she keeps in her bedroom.
Unfortunately, my siblings don’t seem as keen to keep their masterpieces after this year, so the items will probably end up in a special box just for mom for the time being.
On the other hand, I’m keeping mine in my personal box because those memories mean almost as much to me as they do mom.
