The last of Christmas is put away

All the Christmas things have slowly been taken down and put away.  Robin has been up the ladder unhooking our few strings of lights along the fence and the gutters of the house.  Goodness knows how the people who really go overboard with Christmas lights get on – it must take them such a long time.  Our lights were rolled up and put away in the plastic crate till next year.

Outside lights coming down

Meanwhile, I was deconstructing Christmas inside the house.  Down came the Christmas wall-hangings.  Delicate items were carefully wrapped before being placed into the plastic Christmas crates.  I removed my trio of “gold” Christmas trees from the dining room window sill and replaced them with my three brass jugs.  Oh dear – that brass looked rather grubby, in fact I have several brass pieces and they all could do with a good clean before being put back in their original places.  So armed with a tin of Brasso, several cleaning clothes, and some old fashioned elbow grease, I sat outside at the picnic table to do a spot of cleaning.  You just don’t realise how dull brass gets until you see it polished up again.  Everything looked so much brighter.

   My brass elands all nice and shiny

So everything is back to normal once more.  The plastic crates full of decorations, Santas, my precious Jim Shore pieces, Christmas lights, and other assorted stuff have been moved upstairs to our storage loft.  And lastly, the Christmas quilt (hanging on my lovely new rod in the sitting room) has been replaced with “My New Zealand Bird Quilt”.   Hand appliquéd (never again, so much quicker and easier on the machine), and hand quilted, this was designed by Mary Fletcher and I completed it back in 2003.

My New Zealand Bird Quilt