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Hi, sweet Readers! Is it just me or is this Christmas bubbling over with nostalgia, wanting to get together, silly music, and wanting to get together....
Honestly the day after Thanksgiving about 60% of our boxes of Christmas stuff came out---with the goal of organizing, decorating, sorting, and ultimately culling.
Golly---culling has been really hard. To begin with I always try and use different things in different places each year---not like my mother, whose home looked exactly the same in 1958 and in 2005...everything exactly in the same place. It was her last Christmas, and after I had literally just put up all the decorations out in their correct spot, she hobbled around gently adjusting this an inch that way, a leaf turned up, a string hidden, a wrinkle smoothed. I'm pretty sure she knew, it would be her last Christmas. So, this my nostalgia is attached to all her items. I try to use them here and there throughout our home.
Decorating seemed much harder this year...and I didn't have set ideas of where I was going to put anything. I had a knee replacement in 2019...so Christmas was limited that year,
2020 was non-existent because of Covid, it was just Hubby and I, here at all.
Cookies were delivered, along with Christmas presents. Basically thrown out on the curb...sigh! But we did FaceTime as family for opening and it was fun. And, definitely helped.
So opening totes after at least 3 years (some for much longer) was a surprise for sure, and a tug at the heart here and there. I use Danish ornaments, a kitchen baking theme and this year added all the gnomes/Nisseman to the kitchen/dining room, too.
I totally loved this towel as it summed up Christmas here. I usually include some vintage baking tins and forms for decorations in the kitchen. The cookie jar sported a peppermint bow. And I added lots of red and white to my usually blue and white kitchen.
I made lots of ornaments from Jello molds this year(another post), but I have plenty to splatter around the kitchen. The fish poacher is antique enamel and so much fun to fill with stuff!
My great grandmother's cookie former...it has several dies for spritzing out different types of dough or icings. I don't use it, because it is lead/tin and really not that safe.
I found this music box grandma that moves and makes music at a thrift store years ago...she is so cute!
On the left is our giant hibiscus I cut back and is getting lots of new growth.
I swear the coffee station is the busiest corner of the kitchen. We have coffee and hot water going almost all day. It's great for company as everyone can mix cocoa, tea or coffee to their liking.
I use this little tub for catching all that stuff at the sink. I made it pretty with some red/white dish cloths.
Of course there is hand sanitizer everywhere!
My decor over the sink is simple a special snowflake cookie cutter and two of my grandmother's strung together.
In this corner, the toaster gets a cover-up...every cabinet handle has a JuleHaerten, a Christmas Heart pouch, all made by my great-aunt Gudren. She was practically blind, but cross-stitched many little red/white ornaments for us all, often filled with Hershey kisses.
Since our grand girl is a very grown up nine now, ie.- "No more sequins, unicorns, or dolls, anymore, Grandma. I'm a glam girl now." Suddenly, we have to readjust a bit.
My sons' prints and our grand girl at the same age 3.
Where does the time go?---flying by, skittering into the sunset whether we wish to tag along or not. Much of our decor the past nine years has been themed with toys and childhood, both my sons' and our Grand.
In the dining side of our farm kitchen there are fun gnomes and peppermint candy trees planted in some of my plant pots. The middle greens planter is very happy inside and a base for the gnomes to have a winter home.
I've added pinecones, snow and some ornaments for color and of course you have to have lights.
The corner cabinet is a hodge lodge of Danish items, gnomes, vintage tins, cookware, baking items and and just lots of fun things.
Everything on this shelf is antique or Vintage, except the baking nutcracker , even the copper molds are over 50 years old now.
I found these Mr.Mrs Santa 50's dime store lollipop holders a few years ago. They look great with a vintage cocoa box and some enamel ware!
I did pick up the sign at a craft show---pretty much our family. The stork nest Bing/Grondahl Mother's Day plate was a thrift store find. I have many of the Mother's Day plates-gifts from my mom and grandmother, but I never had this one. It is considered good luck for a stork to nest on your chimney in Denmark in the summer time. I remember seeing many nests while traveling through N. Jutland, Denmark as a girl.
Another major interruption this month was a new furnace and air conditioner. When having our winter checkup---the furnace guy pronounced it on it's last legs.
We have been over 7 days without power in the winter--and know what it's like to fight very cold temps--so we opted for a new furnace, rather than a $600 band-aid repair to a twenty-year-old furnace. The temp/humidity gauge is there to read the current temp and how the humidifier is working---(PERFECTLY)!
Sweet Danish stitchery with little children in tassel hats. A Christmas pig painted by an artist over forty years ago.
On the other side are Jul Hearts...a Danish traditions often filled with candies and fruit as gifts.
I still have left touches here and there...and now I have revisited the Nisse-Tomte (Gnomes of my childhood). In fact the only things I really purchased year were two stuffed gnomes, and a gingerbread spoon at a craft fair and items to make my own ornaments.
Red and white mushrooms, hearts, cookies, flags(Danish) and American, little children ornaments from Sweden and Denmark, pinecone gnomes(vintage repros), and cookies fill this little tree.
The tree is very full of ornaments, and there are lots more in the totes...sigh.
Christmas Pig is fattening up on acorns under the tree. He got a bath this year and a touch up here and there.
Gnomes have taken up residence in the the Thyme plant.
I'm surprised they don't charge us rent??
We have rice pudding on Christmas Eve. Why? because we do...as my mom would say.
I made this little pictorial fold-out for a 'prize' for Christmas Eve. The images are from vintage Danish or Swedish post cards, some over 100 years old.
Nisse/Tomte/Gnomes are fairy folk that live in the barn. Rice Pudding on Christmas Eve is payment or a bribe for them to not do harm, but protect the home, barn, and livestock for the coming year. You never want to cross a fairy folk. (WE know this from all the fairytales.)
My one-year old Christmas cactus should be in full bloom next week and it has 8 buds!
So from our warm kitchen to yours,
have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays All!
coming soon
Part 2: Tree and Buffet
Part 3: Bedroom and Hall
Part 4: Rest of the Living Room
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