Christmas is officially put away

It is exciting to get all the Christmas decorations out and as I pull them out of their packing boxes to see what as been packed away for a year.  It is like meeting an old friend.  Then when the New Year sets in, it is equally exciting for me to get all the extra decorations packed neatly away for another year.  I like my home clean and uncluttered.  Even though I love the decorations, I some times feel like there is clutter everywhere I look.  This year we took down the decoration on Monday after New Year's Day.  But because we had three areas on our pre-lit tree we decided to tackle the job of finding out what the problem was.  It took us until today to finally get all the limbs on the tree lit by replacing almost each and every bulb.  What a project.  There are still 5 limbs toward the bottom of the tree that we just couldn't seem to figure out what was wrong.  But, I couldn't stand the mess in the front room any longer, so we gave up and put the tree away.  We will have to tackle the problem next year when we bring out the tree again.  We counted the replaced lights and the total was 381!  Here is a picture of all the old black worn out bulbs.  You have to remember that this tree is 14 years old and we've never replaced any lights.  It was time. 

Notice my table was completely covered with the tree decorations that go in with the tree so they had to sit out on my table for as long as we had the tree up.  The bottom part of the tree has the limbs that we just can't seem to get fixed.  Maybe next year!  We might need some help from Modern Display. 

 Ahhhh!  I feel so much better with my front room back to normal.  Clean and incredibly uncluttered!  Just makes me feel good all over :-)  Nice to have my piano bench officially covered with the needlepoint that Lila Mae did for me.