It's that time of the year. Time to pull out large dusty boxes from storage cupboards and to lug fake trees out from under staircases. Last weekend, or maybe two now, we decorated our house with our Christmas stuff. Let's take a look at what we have, shall we.
Christmas Smokers
I think our favorite decorations of all that we have are our Smokers. They all come from Germany and were bought during our different visits to the country there. The wood cutter above was the first that we bought in the city of Cologn. Smokers tend to be pretty expensive but this one was the cheapest of the lot. We bought it from a vendor in a Christmas market. The vendor had a ton of different sizes and designs of different professions to choose from (I.e. Santa, woodcutter, farmer, hunter...etc). We happened to like this wood chopper.
The next one is our favorite. It's a simple Santa carved in a very minimalistic design. It's sort of our ideal design style actually. This one and the one below can be purchased at Käthe Wohlfahrt. If you're not familiar with it, its a massive German Christmas retail chain located throughout Europe and even in a few places in North America. It sells everything Christmas and tends to be very good quality. It's like... "The" Christmas store, of Germany I suppose.
The last one was a gift we received from my in laws when they went to Germany on vacation many many years ago. This traditional one is hand painted and quite nice as well.
Here you see it beside our new purchase this year, a 1970's ceramic Christmas tree that we bought at an antique store. You probably know about these or have seen them in the past. My grandma had one and I remember it from when I was a kid. I said I wanted to find one so my wife and I started looking way back in the summer. We were quite pleased when we found it in a store that we visit often.
We saw a few of these around and noticed that every one of them tended to look completely different and we didn't like a lot of them that we came across. My wife did some research and discovered that they used to be sold as kits that people would paint and assemble in a class and then wood fire them in a kiln. So how they look really depends on the artist who painted them. We think that Yvonne did an excellent job with theirs. They signed their name and dated the bottom.
Tree Ornaments
We don't have a lot of tree ornaments. Most are just cheap plastic balls and icicles that we bought on sale a few years back, but we do have a few gift and travel Ornaments that are a little interesting. Like our Harry Potter riding a broomstick
And our new edition of "he who must not be named...it's Voldemort in case you can't tell.
Next we have a pretzel from germany
Clogs from Holland
A cow from Switzerland
A cow bell, also from Switzerland
A pickle from Germany
We have other ornaments on the tree but those are my favorites at the moment.
Danish Monkey
Our Danish monkey becomes quite festive this time of year when we put on his removable Santa's hat.
Candle Decorations
My wife has had these Danish candle decorations since she was a teenager. I think that she got them from a family member or something.
Each candle stick hangs from a holder and has its own unique image or carved sculpture. I believe that the company comes out with a different design each year. She hasn't bought a new one since her and I have been together but she talked about maybe getting back into collecting them.
The company also makes (or used to) versions that hang from a Christmas tree as well. Thats from back when people used to hang lit candles from their trees. Some people still do in Europe I hear.
Greenery
We bought this small fake tree in France a few years back and it was our main Christmas tree while we were living there. Now we set it up simply with small yellow Christmas lights.
We bought a new wreath this year to hang over our fireplace mantle as well.
Fire Place and Mantle
The last thing to show is our fireplace and mantle, where a lot of these things are sitting at the moment.
It's particularly festive when it's cold outside and we turn on all the lights and have the fire going.