![\"christmas222222222225687889890-09\"](\"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/christmas222222222225687889890-09-e1414022654114.jpg\")
(***I know this is a mystery blog. I will get back to the mystery side of it soon.***)<\/p>\n(***I know this is a mystery blog. I will get back to the mystery side of it soon.***)<\/p>\n
One of the activities I enjoy each Christmas season is decorating our home. While I miss our son’s and daughter’s help positioning each ornament on the tree, in a way, I feel like they are still with me decorating the tree. My husband and I have replaced our full-branched artificial Christmas tree with a thin but tall artificial tree that takes many fewer ornaments.<\/p>\n
When we switched to a skinny (almost anorexic!) tree, I decided to limit the ornaments to just those to which we have sentimental attachments. So, gone are our shiny store-bought baubles. Instead, we have ornaments lovingly made by our son and daughter. Some of these decorations go back to a time when their little hands were barely able to manipulate the safety scissors or hold the glue sticks.<\/p>\n
As I unwrap each of these priceless ornaments (including a toilet paper tube little drummer boy!) I am taken right back to those days. It’s funny, I remember wondering why those elementary school teachers thought we’d want toilet paper roll tubes hanging on our Christmas trees for may future years. And yet, now every year as I pack them away I treat them like precious family heirlooms.<\/p>\n
OK, enough of my\u00a0sentimental journey! To get back to the point of this blog entry!<\/p>\n
I mentioned a tip a few years ago for families with young children. Please bear with me as I repeat it:<\/p>\n
When my children were young, my son’s very favorite toys of all time were his Transformers<\/em>. My daughter loved her tiny Sesame Street<\/em> characters and, itty, bitty My Little Ponies<\/em> and dolls. As they both got a little older and stopped playing with these small toys, I had the idea to save some of their beloved toys by turning them into small Christmas ornaments using festive holiday ribbons to attach them to the tree.<\/p>\n So now, amongst our third grade pipe cleaner-with-red-and-white Pony bead candy canes, and our fifth grade sequined styrofoam pin-cushion ornaments, we have tiny Transformers<\/em> and itty, bitty My Little Ponies<\/em>. All of these things make our Christmas tree special to us.<\/p>\n How about you? Do you have any holiday decorating tips? If you do, please share them with us by posting a comment below. Thank you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (***I know this is a mystery blog. I will get back to the mystery side of it soon.***) One of the activities I enjoy each Christmas season is decorating our home. While I miss our son’s and daughter’s help positioning each ornament on the tree, in a way, I feel like they are still with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-cozy-mystery-administrators-musings","7":"category-cozy-mystery-administrators-observations","8":"entry","9":"override"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pI0sr-6PH","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26269"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26281,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26269\/revisions\/26281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}