Tag: decorations

Posted in neighbor, neighborhood

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

Posted on by William Douthwaite

…someone lost a bet and had to put the fuzzy flamingoes in their front yard this year.

…someone cleaned out their attic and found some long lost yard decorations. “Hey, remember these? Everyone said we had the best yard in the neighborhood!”

…the HOA went belly-up so anything goes.

…someone up the street died. Whoever cleaned out her house left stuff like this out on the curb. One person’s trash…

…my neighbor put out the first decorations on our block. While some are still trying to coax a few more days from Halloween pumpkins, many have started their Christmas festivities. Less than 25 yards from my house, I have the pleasure of seeing these fuzzy flamingoes every day. This is their first year along this neighbor’s driveway. They are an omen of what’s to come. Soon this neighbor will fill his yard with a hideous hodgepodge of lights, trees, ornaments, snowmen, and other Christmas characters.

Posted in neighborhood

Halloween around the neighborhood

Posted on by William Douthwaite

On my many walks around the neighborhood, I captured the variety of Halloween yard decorations. Here are a few observations:

  • Pumpkins ruled this year. Creative jack-o-lanterns abound. Most are happy, some are scared, and of course, some are cats.
  • Creepy decorations include the scary clown, a floating hand, zombies, and a giant skeleton trying to control a couple of dog skeletons. (Skeletons were a close second to pumpkins this year.)
  • Cute ghosts and Buc-ee round out this year’s decorations near us and around our son’s Texas neighborhood.

So where do you store all this stuff the other eleven months of the year?

Posted in Christmas

The snowmen are back.

Posted on by William Douthwaite

IMG_7929When Eli and I were decorating the tree yesterday, I noticed that my collection of ornaments included eight snowmen. We haven’t bought any ornaments for ourselves, so all of these were given to us by someone sometime in the past. Try as I might, I can’t remember where any of them came from. But since the snowmen hold eight seats in our congress of decorations, I thought I would make a few observations.

First of all, they are all bundled up. Why? I would think that a snowman would revel in the cold. Yet the snowman uniform includes a hat, scarf and mittens. I figure they don’t need them to keep warm, so they must wear them to look “cool.”

Second, snowmen are happy. They are all grinning. Obviously they enjoy their seasonal jobs.  They only really work about four weeks a year. Plus, this bunch gets to live and work where everyone else vacations — Florida! Life is good for these snowmen.

Third, they have found their way into the celebration of Christmas. Frosty the Snowman, their patron saint, doesn’t appear in song until 1950, but scores a television special in 1969 to take his place in the highly competitive American Christmas landscape.

I haven’t made a snowman in over twenty-one years, since we’ve been in Florida. But the snowman is no less popular in the sunshine state than he was in the north. Our tree is testimony to that.

 

 

 

Posted in Life

Back in the box

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Yesterday I put away all of our Christmas decorations. It doesn’t seem that we have as many decorations as other homes I’ve seen, but we do have seven storage containers filled with lights, knick-knacks, ornaments, stockings and dishes, in addition to the tree.

As I was taking the ornaments off the tree, I realized that we did not buy a single one. Continue reading “Back in the box” →