MORE IS BETTER??

I think one of the reasons that Christmas and New Years décor are some of my favorite things is that I am sadly a junk crammed everywhere “more is better” kind of gal.  During Christmas and during the New Year’s celebration, I feel like people are much more accepting of the junk excess stuff in our home.  After getting wound up with the Christmas decorations, there is no hope for me by the time New Year’s Eve rolls around. I joyfully abandon any pretense of trying to cut back on the excess (I know you don’t believe it, but I do TRY to cut back on the excess) and start the new year with a cluttered mess. Then I call that “cluttered mess” New Year décor!

Some of you may remember that I remove the Christmas ornaments from my trees and my grandchildren and I THROW stuff on the trees for New Year’s décor. 

I’ve always driven myself crazy running around getting all of the Christmas decorations back into the holiday closet before midnight on New Year’s Eve.  I have never left any Christmas décor up after midnight on New year’s Eve (of course, I always find a Christmas decoration or two that I had forgotten about weeks after New Years!)  I grew up being told that it was bad luck to leave them up after New Year’s Eve, but I really wasn’t superstitious about it – I just needed a deadline, or the Christmas décor might be up until Spring.  This year, I am NOT going to even pretend that my goal is to have them all down by New Year’s Eve. My goal has been extended to Valentines Day!!  You are looking at the only place in my house where I have removed the Christmas décor (I know, I really haven’t removed much-I’ve just added to what was already there)!

Having told you that I am not superstitious, I’m going to admit that on New Year’s Day, I will be cooking and eating cabbage and black-eyed peas cooked with sterilized dimes.  (The peas are supposed to be cooked with one dime in them. The person who gets the dime is supposed to have the best luck in the new year.  When you have grandchildren, you put a lot of dimes in the peas, so that everyone can feel like they will have good luck in the new year, and you won’t be left with a grandchild who is upset about their prediction of a bad upcoming year – at least that’s what this grandmother does.)  I’ve eaten those vegetables every New Year’s Day that I can remember.  Superstition dictates that these foods on New Year’s Day will bring you luck in the new year.  I’m cooking these foods, because it has become our tradition (AND just in case there is some truth to the superstition.)   

Thank you for visiting my blog.  This REALLY IS more junk than I usually have in my house.  (Okay, I may have more junk in my house, but this is more junk than I usually show on my blog!)  The Favorite Things links are shown below.  I hope you’ll click on each of them to see other blogger’s favorites.

I’m linking to Vignette Friday at Color Outside the Lines and Seasonal Sundays at The Tablescaper.

 

IT'S A NEW YEAR'S EXPLOSION!

No, I'm not posting more Christmas decorations! Believe it or not, they are all put up, and it looks like New Years exploded on my Christmas tree. After I take the Christmas ornaments off of one of our Christmas trees, I decorate it for New Years.






And I do a little New Year's decorating on the fireplace.

Since I don't know anyone else who has a New Year's tree, I get to make the rules. My only rule is that my grandchildren and I do not "arrange" anything on the tree. We just throw it up there, because in my humble opinion (which is the only opinion, since I'm the only person with a N.Y tree) a New Year's tree is supposed to look wild and crazy (sort of like a New Year's Eve celebration-the tackier the New Year's decor is, the better!)

See my New Year's cracker nut? When one of my granddaughter's was 3 years old, she started telling me about the "cracker nuts" she saw in a store at Christmastime. Now, the whole family calls them cracker nuts.

Of course, a New Year's Eve party should have a champagne table (even if you're like me and don't drink champagne--I've never acquired a taste for it!)

I tried to put a little glitz on the New Year's Eve dinner table.

I guess I gave up any chance of glitzy when I used my old trick of placing a paper plate under a glass plate. I do have silver colored chargers edged in clear stones. That's kind of glitzy, right? I got these chargers on the sale aisle at Tuesday Morning a couple of years ago. I just realized, when I looked at this picture, that my knife and fork pattern do not match in this place setting. When I put up the silverware after Christmas, I just dumped all of it into my silver chest without separating it. That's how I ended up grabbing a knife that doesn't match the other silverware on the table. (Of course, I would take a picture of the only place setting that had unmatching silverware!)

I'm using some things on the table that only get used once a year. (I know, it's crazy to keep something that I'm only going to use once a year, but I've tried getting rid of them, and my children don't want them). We received silver champagne goblets for a wedding gift (silver wasn't as expensive back then). I really dislike polishing silver, so I only bring out the champagne goblets for New Year's (and since I don't like champagne, I don't know why I should polish goblets for everyone else to drink from). We selected Moonspun by Lenox as our china and crystal pattern when we got married. As I've said before in this blog, we were very young when we married. I didn't have the sense to think about that if we selected china and crystal with a silver rim, I might not be able to put them in the dishwasher. Of course, when we first married, we didn't have a dishwasher, so it was awhile before I realized that my china and crystal were not going to get much use.

Here's something else that only gets put on the table once a year. It's not very practical, but, of course, I got it on sale. The champagne in a bucket is a salt and pepper shaker. The men in my family think it is a silly thing, so I have to put "regular" salt and pepper shakers on the table too.

The champagne bottle is the salt shaker, and the ice on the side of the bucket has holes for the pepper. (Okay, the guys are right, it's not very practical, but it is kind of cute, and cute is more important than practical, right?).

I tried to add a little glitz with sparkly sprigs in my centerpiece. I'm afraid I'm just not a naturally glitzy gal.

This cup/bowl (I guess it's a soup bowl?) was a gift from my mother years ago. We had seen it in an antique store, and I did enough ooing and ahhing over it that she went back and bought it for my birthday. We traditionally use it for confetti at our New Year's celebrations. (Yes, I vacuum up confetti for weeks, especially since the grandchildren have come along. When they learned that the sparkly stuff in the bowl at my house was for throwing up in the air in wild abandonment, they started liking New Years almost as much as Christmas! We sing happy birthday to the new year while they are tossing confetti everywhere--happy birthday is the only song that even the youngest one knows).

Can you read the words? "Take Ye a Cuppe O Kindnesse For Auld Lang Syne". Now you see why this has become our confetti bowl for New Years. (I tried to dump the confetti out to take this picture-obviously some of it stayed in the bowl).

Maybe the table looks a little more glitzy in candlelight. (you can't see the paper plates as well!)

Thank you so much for coming by to see the explosion. WISHING EACH OF YOU AND YOURS A WONDERFUL 2009! laurie