Today we head north to my folks’ house for a few days and we won’t be back home until after Christmas. So I thought I’d share some of our holiday decorations this year for my contribution to the Virtual Advent Tour.

Welcome to the Burrow! Please come in!

We grew up with fresh swags (made by my great-grandparents, I think) at Christmas, rather than wreaths, so that’s what I continue to go with. Some years I buy them ready made, and sometimes I cobble them together. This year, I bought the juniper greens at the farmers market, left them rubber banded as they came, and added this gigantic bow I’d had at the office from a gift basket I won a couple years ago. It’s started dropping bits of evergreen in the outside hallway, though, so I’m not sure it’ll make it to the new year. We’ll have to see what it looks like when we get back.

Just inside the door, on the breaker box, I’ve hung this silver wreath a former colleague made for me one Christmas. It hung on my office door year-round, so I’m glad I was able to find a spot for it.

Oh! Let me turn on Rudi’s bike for you. ::Fidgets with controller:: Okay, well, I can only get the colored lights on, but you get the idea. There’s also a strand of white lights that goes along with it. He says that he gets compliments every day as he commutes to work, and I believe it.

Come on into the living room.

Here, on this media cabinet, you’ll find all the battery-operated fairy light strands Mum and Dad bought for us this year (and their Christmas card, which didn’t lend itself well to being taped to the wall). It’s also got some of our holiday stuffed animals, some of the Jingle Elves my family has had for decades (they are NOT Elf on the Shelf riffraff), the seed pod Nativity scene Rudi’s mom gave us, the snow globe and luminary I made at the library a few years ago, and a Christmassy picture of Gramma and me that lives on that shelf year-round.

Let me be honest with you. This little tree only got put up tonight. It’s been sitting in its bag in the way since I brought it home from the office last month and we’d just move it around and around, because I wasn’t sure where I could put it that Corey wasn’t going to pull it down while we were away. The pie chest has been holding my plants (my orchids really aren’t thrilled with their sudden lack of natural light and I’m going to have to come up with a solution for that after the holidays). Usually there’s an apothecary jar of yarn right there, but I’ve moved that for the time being. I’ve had this little tree since my freshman year of college, when my Secret Santa gave it to me, along with some of the original decorations. A few more decorations came from my Secret Santa my senior year and otherwise it’s been decorated with ornaments and doodads from my coworkers, such as a nut from Costa Rica and a couple of finger puppets. I probably won’t plug the lights in this year, but I’m glad the tree made its way out finally.

Here is this year’s tree in its wonderful, monstrous glory. It’s the widest (six feet at the bottom!) tree we’ve had in the 15 years we’ve lived in this apartment and takes up two-thirds of the available space by the window. So if it looks a little scrunched up against furniture, it is. (Incidentally, can you believe they gave me a deal on the tree because it had a “hole” in the branch patterning in one spot? I explained it was going in a corner and that I wasn’t worried, but took the discount.) I’d had the tree skirt down, but picked it up when we flooded over the weekend. I’ll leave it up until we get back from up north. Our tree topper is a snowflake, and I didn’t do a great job getting it to stay on top of the tree this year, so it’s dangling down a bit and making the tree look a bit askew. I figure it’s symbolic of the year.

Oh, and that picture you can sort of see to the right of the tree?

There’s a gallery in the town where my best friend, Karen, and I get together where they sell prints of paintings by Carol Spinney, whom some of you may recognize as the man who portrayed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street and who lives nearby. Karen and I were doing some Christmas shopping last year when I admired this print, and she went back the following weekend and bought it for me. Isn’t she awesome?

That’s it from the Burrow! Rudi will have a post for you tomorrow from Connecticut for our penultimate day of the 2018 Virtual Advent Tour.