Taking Down the Christmas Tree and a Little More

The final step of Christmas "take down" is the tree.

The first step is to remove all the ornaments.  I lay a towel out so I can see them all on my oriental rug.....some of them can get lost in the pattern of the rug.  I sort them, on the towel, by kid's ornaments, fragile and non-fragile.  Then I start boxing them up.....wrapping the fragile ornaments in tissue paper and then placing them in a Ziploc bag.  The other ornaments are placed in their original boxes or in an ornament box I have.

Each of my children's ornaments is organized in their own box and labeled with their name. 

When the time comes, they will easily be able to take their ornaments to decorate their own tree.  

After the ornaments are all packed up snug in their beds, it is time to remove the lights from the tree.  

By this time you are ready to throw the lights in a box and be done but when you open that box next year, you will be sad you took that approach. 

I take each light strand and wrap them around these "wheels" I purchased several years ago.  

Each wheel holds 2-3 light strands.  They then fit nicely into their handy, dandy carrying case.  On top of the wheels, I place the cord that houses the "on/off" button for the lights. 

Then the tree goes out the door to where my Christmas elf takes it to dispose of in our woods in the back.  Therefore leaving me with mounds of pine needles to vacuum.  Years ago, I stopped up my regular vacuum cleaner by using it to vacuum up said mound of needles.  After that, I purchased my Shop Vac and it has done the job from that point on.  All that being said, no matter how much I vacuum, I will still be running into and finding pine needles in this room throughout the year......hard to get rid of those pesky needles! 

Here is the "and a Little More" part of the subject line.  In my last post I failed to tell you about my Christmas serving dishes and how I put them away.....so here

 is the rest of the story. 

Each of the dishes is wrapped in a Christmas Dish Towel to protect them while storing the Christmas towels......a two 

for one! 

AAAAAHHHH, finally the Christmas decorations are put away and stored safely in the attic.  And just like every single year, I walk downstairs celebrating and find the one.  There is always one decoration I seem to miss every single year, no matter how hard I try.......there is still ONE!  This year's winner......the pillow.

So I grab the pillow, put it in its place and then know I am done until next year, with the way time flies it will feel like next week. 

Now on to 2016!  Make it a great year!