A Season Of Change

It's that time again! Five for Friday!

The Christmas season is upon us! As much as I LOVE the holiday season, this year has been different. As most of you know, my grandma passed away a few months ago. So, I've spent some time trying to figure out what the new "normal" is, or is going to be. 

Last Saturday, I woke up ready to decorate my house for Christmas {yes, before Thanksgiving-I know some of you are cringing}. As I finished all of the decorations, I looked around and realized that none of it made me happy. I wondered, what could be wrong? My Christmas decorations always make me happy. I sat on it for a day or two. 

Sunday evening came around, and I told the hubby I wanted to re-decorate the entire house. You can imagine the look I got. I explained to him that my Christmas decorations were too loud and too happy. I just didn't feel happy. His response: "So, you want to decorate the house to be a sad house?" <insert my eye roll and sigh of frustration here> 

In case you are wondering what too loud and too happy looks like:

Monday morning I got to work on re-decorating the entire house. I was hoping for something a little less flashy. Something more traditional. Gram's favorite color was red, so I decided to incorporate some pops of red throughout the house. Here's what I ended up with!

Tuesday evening, the hubby came home from work and said, "Wow, this is a totally different feel this year; this is nice." I think he finally understood what I meant by too loud and too happy. He must be a visual learner, like me:).

The hubby was right about one thing: there is no decoration, or ornament, or present that is going to fill this void this year. It is a season of change. I added these angel wings to my tree to remind me I will always have a beautiful guardian angel watching over me from heaven. 

Ok. We did it. We finally gave in to the artificial tree this year. No more Christmas tree mess! I don't know about you, but I hate cleaning up all those dried pine needles. I will miss the smell of a freshly cut tree. I guess that's what scented candles are for. I'm loving how my tree came out this year! It's not bright and whimsical like years past, but it's perfect.

As I stood back looking at my tree, I could hear gram saying, "It's beautiful, I don't know where you got your creativity from, it certainly wasn't me." She would always tell me that after I finished decorating for the holidays. The truth is, all the decorating her and my mom did when I was a kid is probably where my love of decorating came from. Christmas has always been one of the happiest times of the year.

I know I've spent most of this post talking about Christmas, and you're wondering, where did Thanksgiving go? Here was our Thanksgiving feast:

You didn't think we were done with Christmas, did you:)? I created my first mesh garland this week! Not bad for my first try. 

Someone else is ready for Santa, too! Isn't he the cutest?

I apologize if you were expecting five awesome December classroom activities. This teacher has been on vacation! Well, I may have created a thing (or two) this week. Stay tuned next week for lots of December fun! We have a visitor from The North Pole who will be visiting room 16!