the tangle that is Christmas and other stuff

can someone please explain how this happens?

last year after Christmas, I carefully took the lights of the tree in my dining room and wrapped them round & round my arm. carefully. I then tied them up with some gorgeous gold ribbon and placed them on top of the decorations in the 'dining room' box. On Thursday, I decided it was time to put this tree up and decorate it. So I took the lid of the box and there were the lights all neat and tied. Until I took the ribbon off. It was like they had a mind of their own, like they had had enough of being constrained for 12 mths, tied up like a turkey. And in a blink of an eye - I had the tangled mess that you see above. Or maybe - this happened to show me what my poor frazzled Christmas brain is like - a big tangled mess.

so I got on with my decorating - this tree is not my main tree {I have a real tree in my sitting room as my main tree}. This tree is a tradition now - when I first put it up about 15 years ago, I lived elsewhere and my kitchen was huge. In one corner I had an old kooka stove that was for show only. One Christmas, my home was featured in a country magazine so I had to pull some pretty fantastic ideas from my brain. I decided to do a kitchen themed tree - but didn't really want to go hanging my utensils all over it. So I made some cloth gingerbread men - with a little cinnamon stick, some cloves and a teenie tiny cookie cutter all tucked into his pocket. I made about 20 or so and decided to give them away to friends after the photo shoot. A tradition was born. Each year from then on, I have put this tree up and made a different decoration, sometimes more than one design.

I haven't been as industrious this year - I have made decorations to send to my friends but not enough to give away as friends visit - I plan to give them some Christmas cake & awhile back I bought some Christmas soaps from Peggy. The idea was to have them in a little pressed glss bowl at my door to give out to my friends instead of my home made decoration. But when I unwrapped the soaps, Peggy had packaged them up into individual cardboard boxes and tied them with raffia! Just like a gift. so this is what I decided to do :~

don't they look wonderful? Just perfect!

and here are some close ups of my decorations ~ most I have made myself, some were given to me (there is a little ball that Leeann sent to me in my Christmas stocking) & some were purchased at some time during my travels - all with a meaning.