O.A. pag Pasko

Kahit na malapit nang mag-goodbye ang aming authentic Christmas tree, tuloy pa rin ang pagdedecorate namin ng groundfloor. With the valuable help of Auntie Lea, our cousins Wig, Coco and Pico, we started decorating last November 24. Tradition na ng family to make an event out of the annual decorating session. Siyempre, merong food, courtesy of my sister Gladys and our cousin Coco.

As usual, I arranged the Belen, using my mom's foodtray (made out of twigs) as the barn, and the individual leaves that fell off the plastic garlands as the grass. My mom and sister decided to collect angels sold at National Book Store this year so we made another display for that. Since super aga pa, hindi muna namin tinatanggal sa plastic ang mga angels (except for one) -- ugaling Pinoy talaga! Hehehe!

If you've been to the house, you know that my mom has a lot of Chinese jars. So the potted Santa Claus heads became the toppers for the gold jars. Team effort naman ang paggawa at paglagay ng garland sa banister. The theme of the garland changes every year. This year, puro balls and ribbons naman.

My sister collects Santa Claus toys and displays them every Christmas. Can you spot some of them in the pictures below?

Hindi masyadong kita sa picture but bagong pakulo ng sister ko ang vertical Christmas garlands sa may frenchdoors. My mom kasi collects huge, red Christmas balls. Since hindi namin alam kung anong gagawin sa mga yun, my sister thought of the vertical garlands so we can place the balls on top of each garland. The largest ball was hung at the middle of the horizontal beam. Mukha siyang gigantic cherry. The baby Jesus below is actually a piece of an old ceramic Belen my grandparents used to have. I didn't know what to do with it so I temporarily made a large manger out of a wooden plant bowl from Vigan and an old garland we initially thought of disposing.



While we were decorating, there was one person that we all remembered and missed -- our Auntie Kris. She was the one who started the "magpaka-OA sa decorations" pag Christmas. Siya lagi ang nangunguna sa pag-decorate sa house nila, then she will call us up to ask when we plan to decorate so she could join the fun too! She really loved the holiday season. Her creativity inspired us to go all out when it comes to decorating. Her enthusiasm infected us enough that as we grew older, we planned Christmas games and activities the way she taught them to us. For one second we thought of cancelling our family Christmas decorating session this year. But we knew Auntie Kris wouldn't want us to do that. And good thing we went through with it. Although we were missing her presence, the fun we always had while decorating was still there last Saturday. After all, parang may sumuka ng mga Christmas balls ngayon sa bahay eh. Hehehe.