Flashback Friday

Sometime in the late 80's I got a wild idea that I wanted to decorate our home for Christmas. This was no easy task. We would barely have our Thanksgiving meal put away and the dishes done, and we were off to start the decorating. Me and my family at our house, and my mom and brothers at her home. Over the years the decorating got to take more and more of our time. Most years we would spend all 4 days of the Thanksgiving weekend making sure every little detail was just perfect. One year my mom tripped over her garland and broke her knee during decorating. Another year Laci was helping with the lights and came across a broken bulb. She got a little shock and that was the end of her helping with the lights. What started out as a few lights, a cut out Santa, and candy canes quickly got out of hand. We, my mom and I, (with Jerry and Toms help with the cutting of wood) decided we were going to make Christmas cutouts and sell them at street fairs. BIG JOB! Not only were we planning the newest additions for our yards, we had paint brushes and paint in our hands every free moment we had. That first year at Christmas on Euclid we did great! We had a one of a kind item. The following year we did OK, not great, it seems people know a new trend when they see it, and jumped on the bandwagon.

That was just fine with us. We now had more time for our yards. It was fun to see our neighbors getting into the decorating fun right along with us. Most nights we had quite the traffic jam on our end of the block.We were highlighted several times on our local news, both my mom's house and ours. Several times the newspaper had pictures and small articles too. One year our local newspaper even did a bigger story on the "friendly competition" between mother and daughter, who happen to live across the street from each other, and called the title "War of the Red Noses". I believe it was the same year War of the Roses came out in the theaters. We really had a great time getting into the festive mood.

Oh, and just so you know, those two girls right below, with the very young man, HATED, I can't emphasize enough, HATED all the decorations! They were so afraid their school would get wind of what their house looked like and put the story on the morning news. Just think, if we hadn't put so much money into two sets of braces......what our decorations could have looked like then! Do I miss our yard all lit up and looking like a magical wonderland? YES! Do I miss all the work it took to accomplish the task? Heavens NO!....and as for the teenagers, I'm thankful that they are all grown up.
Because, you see, I have all of these beautiful gifts sitting warm and cozy in front of my tree, inside!