What Christmas decorations do you look forward to pulling out of your storage each year?
My favorite thing to pull out of our Harry Potter storage closet under the stairs is my miniature Christmas village.
When I was 11 or 12, my grandparents gave each grandchild a crisp new one hundred dollar bill for Christmas. You can imagine how excited we all were. At that age, I don’t even know if I had ever seen a one hundred dollar bill, much less had one in my posession!
My friends romanced me with stories of all the new clothes I could buy at the after-Christmas sales, and believe me, it was tempting! But, I can’t change who I am: I’m a very sentimental gal, so I knew I wanted to use the money to purchase something that would always help me to remember my grandparents.
So I headed down to our mall’s Christmas store and studied all the little villages they had on display. They had the colorful, candy decorated ones, the Charles Dickens Village, the Disney villages. But I love the city, so the “Christmas in the City” series caught my eye immediately.
These villages aren’t cheap. I was only able to purchase a post office and a figurine, but I loved it, and proudly displayed it on my dresser, right next to my gigantic boom box. You can see it on the far right in the picture below.
My village is still rather small (see above note about that pesky price issue), but it has grown to include a school, apartment building, theater, and toy shop, as well as lots of little people wandering the streets.
Every year now, as I pull each piece out and admire it, I think of my grandparents 800 miles away in California. And I can’t wait to share this tradition with my children, all the while telling them stories about their Great Grandpa who has a huge heart and loves to tease and Great Grandma who makes you feel so loved with her kind words and her pride in her posterity’s accomplishments.
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That’s really cool. Good for you for going sentimental!
Lovely traditions – they always make the holidays so much more special.
I didn’t know thats how it started, its funny Abby and Adalyn love your houses too
I think holiday villages are beautiful. My mom used to have a few at home and every time she got them out, Christmas seemed to begin.
P.S. Your blog design is awesome!
Just glad the boxes are at your house and not mine anymore.