Christmas Decor

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This is how we've been making over the dining room at Christmas for some years. The table gets turned and pushed over so the tree fits into the corner, where the cats can have fun destroying it. The gorgeous angel on the top of the tree was a gift from Jean McCawley. We put the angel up and admire her every year. Yes, that's a pumpkin to the right on the table. I didn't get around to carving it for Halloween, so it has a Santa hat. If it lasts long enough I might give it long ears for Easter. I put up a garland across the curtain and hang needlepointed ornaments on it. They were supposed to be small, but I had plastic canvas (which has much larger meshes than needlepoint fabric and so the same design becomes much larger) and used leftover knitting yarn to make them.

Here are closeups of the needlepointed ornaments. After I stitched them and trimmed the plastic canvas I backed them with white felt and over-stitched them with gold yarn. It took a few years before I figured out the right place to display them. They work well here, because they're up so high that anything smaller would be difficult  to see. There were several angels to choose from into pattern leaflet. I liked the brunette. She reminded me of me at the time... well, it was a long time ago.

Under the plaid cloth are two bookcases. The one in front Dad & I built out of pine boards & stuck on rollers. This turned out to be a good thing because for some years now, we roll that bookcase from the backroom (the corner where the tree goes) into the living room in front of the other bookcase. This means no one can use the encyclopedia for a month. The gap in the bricks is a 'window' into the kitchen and the fishtank is there. The Christmas collage is backed with an aquarium background so the fish don't have to stare at white cardboard for a month.

We have got a lot of Santas, don't we? Putting everything together makes a really impressive display and it mostly keeps the cats from climbing on them and knocking everything over. Some of these things are very old. To the left behind the Santa mugs that spell out Noel are a small group of gnomes with pine-cone bodies and papier maché faces. They are older than I am, but I don't know how much older. I forgot to take a photo of the collage behind the display before it got covered up. I'll try to remember to do it when I'm putting things away.

This collage is made mainly from Christmas cards, but some bits of Christmas gift wrap were also used. Christmas card collage is great fun and relatively inexpensive. Just save all the cards from years and years- sort them into ones that'll fit a theme- indoors, Santa and snowy landscapes are the ones I had most of, but if you had lots of religious ones,  they would be lovely, too. Pick the ones you like best and leave them whole, and cut others to overlap them slightly, rearrange, rearrange, rearrange, (trying to keep things in perspective is a good idea- sometimes you can't. It's also important to find as many with a distinct horizon line as you can and try to make them fit with the least cutting possible- I was very lucky with two of them- the deer by the golden stream and the tree farm) then glue them onto a large piece of poster board with white glue (Elmer's works fine).

This is a collage and an Advent Calendar. First I made the front by arranging and taping the cards together on the back. As I was going to cut them and fiddle more  I did minimal trimming and overlapping unlike the other collages. Then I decided where the holes should go and cut them with an exacto knife (on a heavy board, so as not to wreck the dining room table), and then found things to put behind them that would make nice surprises. I think I put a pony on December 7, so I could have a pony for my birthday. The upper left corner is outside, but most of it is inside scenes, so there's a feeling of movement from left to right, outside cold to inside warmth.