It is our New Year's Day tradition to remove every trace of Christmas. Well, it's Tony's tradition, and I am forced to go along with it. Even though I would rather gradually take everything down and put it away, we usually are finished by noon...all traces of Christmas...POOF. Gone. The only exception is if the weather outside is too frightful for Tony to get out on the roof to remove the outdoor stuff. It's always so depressing to see all the festive lights and decorations packed away. While I am happy to get rid of the clutter, I always miss the glowing lights that seem to warm up the dreary days and nights.

I have a few snowman things that I always get out after the Christmas decor comes down, but this year, I left a few of the decorations up and transformed them from Christmasy to wintry. Hence today's awesomeness.

One of my very favorite things to decorate for Christmas is the stair railings. Our first Christmas in this house, when Justin was a newborn baby, I couldn't wait to go shopping for greenery, bows, ribbons, lights, etc, and the first thing I decorated, before the tree even, was the staircase. I think I'm saddest to see it all come down as it's the first thing I see when I walk in the front door. The way the windows along side of the front door are located, I can see the decorated bannister as I pull in my driveway. So, I decided to leave it up.

I put away the red velvet and plaid taffeta Christmas bows and added snowflake and snowman ornaments from the tree. I loved how it looked, then later in the day yesterday when I went to Walmart, I found this roll of white pom pom things meant for decorating a miniature Christmas tree. It reminded me of little snowballs, and I bought several rolls of it. They were only .62 a roll, so the bargain hunter in me couldn't pass it up. I wove the cute snowball garland through the branches of the greenery on the bannisters, and I love how it turned out:






As I was winding the snowball strand around, I had a thought that it sort of looks like popcorn more than snowballs, and I hope that Rudy doesn't try to eat it. He loves popcorn.



I also took all the Christmas ornaments and other sparkly things from the middle of the dining room table. I left the glass candle holders, greenery and white lights. I added snowflakes and the snowball garland to that as well:






I added a few more snowflakes and some white ornaments I found for .50 at Walmart to the light in the dining room:




In the kitchen:




(That platter was another bargain...$1.99 last year the day after Christmas. The glass bowl with snowflakes cost a whopping $3 on at the local Hallmark store the day after Christmas many years ago.)




(That runner was another bargain...a couple of days ago, I found it on clearance at Target for $6.50).

Can you tell I love a good bargain?

Finally, I love this candle holder my mother in law gave me years ago:






Is anyone wondering why someone who hates snow and winter sooo much has all of these visual reminders of snow and winter decorating her house? That is a very valid thing to wonder, and I wondered myself as I was decorating yesterday. I have no answer.

Day 2 of writing about something awesome...only 363 to go.