Fear the Crab

This year is the first set of winter holidays spent as a married couple.  It’s not that much of a dramatic change, since the “courtship” years prior saw me dividing time between the in-laws and blood-relatives.  Perhaps it is the new living arrangements, however, that makes this year seem different.

We’ve inherited the artificial tree and lights, but the decorations have been retained by my parents for use at their new home.  This leaves Maile and I with a clean slate to make this tree our own, and right now we have a total of seven decorations.

Dog not counted as decoration

Worth mentioning are two ornaments we received as wedding gifts, each a special hand-crafted item made out of an eggshell covered in reflective bead-work.  Despite its implied fragility, the glue and/or cotton stuffing keeps it quite sturdy.  A section of the shell is open so that one can insert a small photograph, while the cotton supports it from behind.  Right now Maile and I have each of our pictures inside, but later we can swap them out for others.

The other decorations are a hodgepodge of items, individually purchased or gifted without semblance of theme.  It is a habit picked up from my childhood, where the old decorations were souvenirs or knick-knacks collected throughout the years, from a variety of locations.  Some of the items were crafts from my elementary-school days, such as stocking-stuffed dolls or styrofoam sno-cones.

The overall effect was a patchwork quilt, an eclectic ensemble of odds and ends which Maile felt gave a “homey” atmosphere.  Since those decorations are not available to us anymore, we’re looking to recreate and capture that same feeling with our own collection.  We started with a few items from earlier in the year, and recently purchased two more decorations to represent 2008.  We will likely seek to acquire one or two each following year until we’ve assembled our own set of holiday cheer.