Christmas at my house

We've had our tree up now for a couple of weeks and is it bad to say I'm ready to take it down? The first couple of days its so nice to have a beautiful glowing tree to get you in the Christmas spirit, and then slowly, the tree starts to lose needles everywhere, the lights start to sag a little, the playful new kitten has removed all of the ornaments from the bottom of the tree, the skirt has already been put away since the kitten likes to move it around the house.

I will keep the tree up until the big day, but after that all bets are off. Last year our tree went out the day after Christmas.

But anyway, I took these pics the day it was decorated, and the newest addition to the tree this year are the vintage birds. Cardinals and doves. My great Aunt let me bring home some of her ornaments since she is unable to put a tree up any more, and as soon as I saw the birds I knew they would be happy at my place.

Growing up our tree topper was a white dove, wings spread. The funny thing about our childhood white dove was that, when we moved to St. Louis and were able to get a tall beautiful tree, we weren't really able to reach the top of the tree to gently place the dove in its highest resting spot. So every year we would take different approaches to get him up there, we would just throw him up there and hope that he would hold on for dear life, we would use a yard stick to try to gently coax him to the top. We would try to take the youngest member of the family and hold him up, and hope he could reach the top. After all of these attempts over the years, that poor dove became a little worse for the wear, and eventually lost a beak. So, instead of retiring that bird, my creative mom took a dried navy bean and put it where a beak use to be, and we lived with that bird for quite some time. I don't believe that dove is still around, but when I spotted the birds at my Aunts house, it brought all of those memories back, and now we have doves on our tree.