AM~Erica Says So: AM~Erica Took it Down

Friday, January 11, 2013

AM~Erica Took it Down

So anyway...

Now that the THANKSGIVING & CHRISTMAS COOKIES ARE FINALLY BAKED, it was time to move along with the next thing in the holiday cycle...

Taking down the decorations!

Yes, it is January 11th, and we have never had the decorations up this long after Christmas!

For years, my hubby couldn't stand having the decorations up after Christmas. We were literally stripping the decked halls a day or two after the actual holiday celebration. Something about not being able to see the abundance of beautifully decorated boxes that fed anticipation was just too sad for him.

In the past very few years, he's been able to leave up the tree & all until about New Year's Day...and that was really stretching it for him. But with the CRAZINESS HAPPENING IN OUR HOUSE throughout the holiday season, it made things more challenging.

In the midst of NEW CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS, we decided we would leave up our tree & decor until Epiphany (which is January 6th, also known to be Three Kings Day and the 12th day of Christmas...which is for totes realz, people).

Well, Epiphany came & went...and the tree was still up, with no boxes to even house the decor elsewhere. It was staying put. Life still happened & thwarted our plans...again. *sigh* But we bought new decorations at after-Christmas clearance sales...so we kept decorating the tree anyway...and we were enjoying how it will look next year.

However, with the cookies baked (and only partially eaten), the egg nog is expired, the extras moved out (mostly), the Christmas stuff is FINALLY taken down (mostly)! *WHEW*

And how do we prep for getting the stuff taken down? By putting on music, of course! Just like we enjoy listening to Christmas music as our decorations take a whole day or longer to go up, we had quite an eclectic playlist for the 45 minutes to an hour to take it all down.

As we took down the ornaments, wreaths, garland, stockings, knick-knacks & the tree, we jammed to Lady Gaga, Florence & the Machine, the Beatles...and many, many more! We danced, did lip syncing, and outright belted out some tunes to make things move faster. "Bad Romance", "Hurt", "Dog Days are Over", "Fix You", "Twist & Shout" are all just a small part of our interesting playlist...that we never totally got thru. But there was some seriously good tunes as we got everything down.

And you know what? We have a lot more room around here! And you know what else? It really does take way longer to put things up than to take things down.

That's crazy talk, folks!

Anyone else with some procrastination issues in taking down their Christmas stuff? I mean besides the Christmas tree we left up for over a year that we really will take down this time... (oh...I have shamed myself...again)

If it matters at all...we are making plans for the ENCHANTED FOREST TREE ENTRY for this coming year, as well as our ornament additions (which we've been testing out to see how the look...cuz, well, you know...the tree was still up), and what to do with that downstairs tree...that we really are gonna take down & then put back up several months from now...

OK...a bit blurry...but here's the star we are gonna use next year

Better overall pic...but with the topper being used for the tree downstairs next year...
...and the same topper will be used for the Enchanted Forest entry next year, too.