A Touchable Creche

Am spending today being festive. The online invitation service I used ate the Thanksgiving invitations instead of giving them out so we had an unexpectedly quiet and personal celebration here together. It was very peaceful and it was a very grown-up feeling to be serving a golden turkey to a table crowded with happy faces that I am mother to.

Today though, the house is warming up to the smell of the live fir we brought home. We've got a new spot for it this year, a little fresh thinking and furniture rearranging turned up a cozy new center of the room spot for it...directly across from the fireplace, nuzzled up the couch so we can read storybooks in the glow.

Yesterday the great decoration endeavor began. All the pumpkins went to the kitchen to be roasted, all the bittersweet went out the compost pile and the bronze ribbon was folded carefully and tucked into the "Autumn" shelf in our basement storeroom. There is a small congregation of red and green Rubbermaid tubs in the living room now and we've hauled all manner of glittering things out and tucked them here and there.

This year I set up our ceramic look-but-don't-touch creche on the top of our dining room bookcase to keep it farther from tempted fingers but in full view of everyone who wanted to look. Then we got the glue gun out, rooted through the toys and the fabric scraps and made a new, kid-friendly wooden creche for the old spot on the top of the cupboard in our entry hall. The boys had so much fun helping me make tiny little shepherd's staffs and special magi costumes and we used up a whole bunch of the sticks they love to stash making our little version of a stable.

 The whole kit and caboodle is basically a bunch of wooden peg dolls that we decorated and a cardboard box. We draped a gauzy curtain across the painting hanging behind it, dangled white twinkle lights inside and topped the whole thing with an extra tree-topper star we had sitting in the depths of one of the tubs. The boys were already up there playing several times, imagining angel songs and names for all the unknown characters. We added the wooden two farm animals Big Grandpa cut out of plywood one time when we were visiting up north and there's a little brown basket for a manger, waiting for the Christ Child. We're talking about what we'll make him out of on Christmas Eve. I may have a new tradition on my hands!