It's Beginning to Feel like Christmas!

Our family has had a jammed pack year full of celebrations and sorrows. We are, to put it mildly, pretty well spent emotionally and physically at this point. We were honestly not really feeling in the Christmas spirit this year! After my day today, though, I think it may all come together!

My daughter was married in September (beautiful bride, beautiful wedding!). We had decided to go with silk flowers mainly because she had a particular color scheme in mind and also because of the expense of live flowers, not to mention the "green" aspect of it all. The floral arrangements were gorgeous and we had originally planned sell the glass vases, clear marbles and floral arrangements on craigslist for someone else to get for a bargain price if they wanted to and help us recoup some of the expense.

Then my husband said he'd like to put the flowers on some of the gravesites of his family members. The graves of immediate family members are pretty well tended to by his mom and aunt, but others not so much. Being a good ol' Richmond boy, he has dozens of relatives born, raised and buried nearby, hence a lot of grave sites that have long since been neglected. He and my son took a couple of the arrangements out to some "great" relatives and he said it felt really nice to recycle them in that way.

Then I read a great article by Lisa Riggs (AC content Producer) how to use those glass vases that tend to sit in the closet . . . Since we had ten glass vases, I definitely benefited from her article. Here's the link if you want to read the article: Ideas for Christmas Centerpieces Using Your Glass Vase. I recycled some of the glass vases by filling them with Christmas ornaments that I didn't use this year on the tree. (They can be purchased at the Dollar Store as well.)

Finally, for the wedding, we had white and silver bows made to put on the chairs along the aisles. I reused some of them on the Christmas tree and took some apart to use as ribbon on the tree. It turned out to be a beautiful tree.

All in all, we're quite pleased to be able to get double mileage out of these items that cost quite a bit originally, but will now be used over and over. Each time we reuse them, we'll have happy memories of the wedding as a bonus!

I think I'm actually getting in the Christmas spirit now! I may even bake some cookies tomorrow!