Christmas Village 2021

And so it begins…getting ready to set up the Christmas Village in a very limited space this year. There are bins and boxes and stuff all over the living room, with a narrow path through it all. The tables are up, the tablecoths spread, the tree is in the corner without ornaments. Spacing of everything is critical for the finished project. It’s a mix of fall and Christmas right now. It usually takes me about 2 weeks to set up the village and I like to have it up for the Thanksgiving holiday and all of December, so I’m right on track time-wise to meet that goal.

Anyone who knows me, knows I love Christmas and decorate the whole house. When Karen and I became roommates, we doubled our holiday decorations and merged our two villages, making the village display huge! Generally speaking, all the village houses were hand-painted by me with some assistance from Karen in more recent years. Many of the accessory pieces have been purchased, but many of the figurines were also painted by me, when I had much better eyesight!

I’ve gotten to the point that I have certain story lines that I like to form with the placement of the buildings and accessories. There’s always a Candy Cane Lane, a Maple Sugar Factory in honor of my Dad, a Town Square with lighted town tree, a train and depot, a snowball fight near the ice skating rink and campfire, a farm with a tree lot and animals, a covered bridge and horse-drawn sleigh on the way to Grandmother’s house and of course the church with nativity scene.

I’ve named my town Mistletoe, after a Harlequin book I read years ago and keep a copy of the book with the village. It’s a story about a magical village that pops up once a year, just like mine.

Originally, I painted 3 of these villages, one for me and one for each of my daughters, incorporating their favorte hobbies and likes with the buildings that were gifted each year along with an accessaroy piece or two. Today, our village is a merging of Karen’s and mine with an added building in honor of her Dad and my late husband.

And now, the village is being put away once again, until it pops up next Christmastime. It’s a joy to be able to see it every day and remember the love that went into each and every handpainted piece. I would love to be able to leave it up year round, but apartments don’t factor in space for that!

So here’s my wish to each of you for 2022 (copied from a friend’s Facebook post)