Saturday, December 25, 2010

My home during the Christmas season


 Today's photo shoot, in keeping with the season is a little tour around my house to give you a glimpse of how we celebrate and decorate for Christmas.

 Christmas Eve was as beautiful experience as ever.  At 3pm I played organ for a little country church.  (Karl came with me).  6pm Karl, Derek and I attended our own church for their Christmas Eve service.  Then, because Karl likes going to a midnight Christmas Eve service we attended a beautiful church in downtown Kilgore that played wonderful traditional carols with pipe organ music and a re telling of the Christmas story from the gospels of Luke and Matthew.  This church had huge banners painted in Medieval fasthion of the Christmas story lining either side of the church, eight banners in all.
     After driving around my nieghborhood to see all the light displays, we came in for hot chocolate and reading of our favorite Christmas stories.  Derek has outgrown these stories but we love to read them every year.



   The first is The Christmas Miracle of Johnathon Toomey by Susan Ojciechowski. It's a poignent story of a carpenter who hasn't stopped grieving for the loss of his wife and child but whose faith is renewed when shown the unconditional love of a widow and her son when they request  him to build a creche for Christmas.




    The second is called The Candle in the Window by Grace Johnson and it's a retelling of an old folk tale.  Leo Tolstoy wrote the same story called, Where Love is God is, only his protagonist is a monk. A shoesmith doesn't want to celebrate Christmas since he lost his wife and son (hmm...do you see a pattern here?) On Christmas Eve he is visited by some mysterious guests who tell him he is going to be visited by Jesus that night.  While he excitedly waits, he is visited by a frail, old woman, a poor, jobless man and an orphan.  You'll have to read the book to know how it all pans out.







    















The following photo story shows how I decorate my house.  Some people collect Santas, some collect Snowmen.  Call me crazy, but I collect nativity scenes:

This one is from Ecuador.




The one below is also from Ecuador




This glass nativity scene is the very first one I ever bought, about twenty years ago.

We like to celebrate Christmas morning with an abundance of chocolate.





We always make a gingerbread house.  This year, with Karl and his daughter Grace's help we made a gingerbread village.







For some reason I have an inordinate amount of angel ornaments, mostly gifts from students from when I taught school.







An ornament to commemorate where I live.





And the piece de resistance.
May you and yours have a very blessed Christmas and New Year!

10 comments:

The Engineer said...

Hi Sharon, yes, it was a wonderful Christmas with the best company! Nice blog, but could be better proofed: Remember - "I before E except after C or when sounded like A as in neighbor and weigh. Neither the weird financier nor the foreigner seizes leisure at its height." (Though there are over 900 exceptions!) And the Toblerone bar was upside down. :( Nice photos too, and thanks for the creche. :) I put it in our front window. Karl

John and Deb Barker said...

What beautiful pictures! Thanks for sharing!
I hope you and your family had a Merry Christmas!
Debbie B. http://johnanddebinlove.blogspot.com/

Sharon Wilfong said...

Thank you! We had a wonderful Christmas. You also have a very nice blog. Take care!

Sharon Wilfong said...

@the Engineer. Ok smarty pants. You just wait. You're going to see how hard it is to check every mistake no matter many times you proof. I am now going to visit your blog and look for mistakes! :))
PS I WANTED the Toblerone upside down!

laughwithusblog said...

Your decorations are beautiful! Thank you for your comment today! I wrote a response on my blog.

Sharon Wilfong said...

Thank you. I'm now in Florida at my parents and I think I'm going to have to post photos of my mom's decorations.

Elizabeth said...

Beautiful decorations...you might want to check out this design blog I found...it looks like something you would like.

I have it posted on my blog, but here is the site:

http://allaboutvignettes.blogspot.com

Nice to meet you.

Elizabeth
http://silversolara.blogspot.com

Sharon Wilfong said...

Thanks I will check it out as well as your blog. Have a great day!

DMS said...

I love the pictures of your holiday decor! I have a collection of snowmen and Santas. I enjoyed your tree and the beautiful ornaments! Wow! I haven't read either of the books you mentioned- but I adore holiday books, so I will have to check these out! Thank you so much for sharing- they sound delightful!

~Jess
http://thesecretdmsfilesoffairdaymorrow.blogspot.com

Sharon Wilfong said...

Jess, thanks so much for visiting. I bet your house filled with snowmen and Santas are lovely as well. The wonderful thing about snowmen is you can keep them up for the entire winter season! Take care!