Gifts from Poland

I don’t know what motivates me, but I am one of those peculiar people who enjoys spring cleaning after Christmas. Thus today saw me clearing out the utility room and re-arranging all my mops, dusters and so forth and getting rid of unwanted items, until the room was tidy, clean and organised. This was followed by me having a blitz on the oak dresser in our family room. I took all its contents off the shelves, which were then given a good dust and clean, after which all the plates and assorted memorabilia were replaced on them, once they had been washed, dusted, polished or whatever was needed to make them sparkle.

The upshot was that by the end of the day I felt very satisfied with my labours but had no blip to show for it. Inspiration nearly deserted me until I decided that I hadn’t blipped this Christmas tree before, and it really deserved some attention. It was made by my Polish daughter-in-law’s sister, E. The pine cones were collected from the nearby forest by the two sisters when my son and daughter-in-law were on a visit to Poland before our granddaughters were born. E then painted them green and stuck them on a foam cone, after which she stuck on home-made cookies and all the rest of the decorations. 

The amazing thing is that she packed the tree up very carefully in bubble wrap and posted it to us and it arrived absolutely intact, with nothing broken! The glass ornament on the top, being very fragile, was packed in the box in which she had bought it (along with the matching baubles), but those were all stuck to the tree and yet they arrived in perfect condition. How good is that? I have since wrapped some fairy lights around the tree and it has been giving us such a lot of pleasure for the past six years.

The cloth it is sitting on was crocheted and given to us by our daughter-in-law’s mother, so this part of the house feels like a little corner of Poland!