Christmas Decor – Handicap or Minimalist?

One of the disadvantages of moving every two to three years is that with each Christmas season you realize what worked in one home doesn't in the next (there are advantages too ... check in tomorrow for my thoughts about that one). The icicle lights that worked on the base house in Camp Lejeune, were added to so we would have enough for our home in Maryland. But we would have had to hire a cherry-picker to safely get them on our next home in Norfolk – although Jeff did attempt it the first year we were there and I just about had a coronary as I saw him dangling on a neighbors ladder – 4 years of med school, 3 years of residency, 3 years of fellowship ... all flashing before my eyes. One word – grounded.

Window candles? Looked charming in the house we rented in Bethesda, translated great to our first home in Norfolk, looked fine in the house we rented in Jacksonville, NC – and then it ended. Thus the purchase of the icicle lights. The lit wreath? Worked great in one home – the electrical hook up was close; the next home now we needed two wreaths for balance ... and so it goes. The inside is pretty much the same – what works one place doesn't in the next. Add to the decorating handicap the fact that with our limited weight allowance and Jeff repeatedly telling me we would have no storage, I brought very little in the holiday decorating dept.

In the spirit of Asian influence this years theme would appear to be minimalist Holiday decorating. The tree is up and decorated, some of our more prized Christmas decorations made the cut to travel overseas and are out ... and yet, still the house seems to lack a festive spirit.

We do not have "window treatments" per se in this house. The government housing office supplies us with vertical blinds at the sliding glass door (yuck) and miniblinds at the windows (double yuck). I'm too cheap to go out and buy curtains for the windows downstairs knowing this is temporary quarters, and with the sewing machine in storage there's no "whipping up" some inexpensive curtains. So my focus turned to the windows ... big blank canvases ...

I decide to get creative and I got the idea to purchase an ensemble box of Christmas ornaments from the Exchange and hang them from the window curtain hooks that are permanently installed ... just waiting for someone more motivated that I am to put some curtains up. Yesterday I took fishing line and strung up the ornaments hanging them from the ceiling – in varied heights and random color arrangements of course – and I have to admit ... it helped, a lot. This house will not win any Martha Stewart Home for the Holiday's Awards but with the Christmas music playing, the Balsam and Cedar candle lit and the decorations out this is our home for the holidays and I'm inspired.