Bows Abound

About a week before Christmas I pulled my tubs of shirt boxes, ribbons and bows out of their storage spots. I lugged my selection of wrapping paper up from the basement. Then I basically piled everything in a corner of my living room. My wrapping pile because my wrapping head quarters and when a free moment presented itself I would wrap a gift and stick it under the tree. Slow and steady right?

Maddy found the box of ribbons fascinating. It seems every time I turned around she has strung six different colors of ribbon from the leg of one table to the leg of another. In her mind she was decorating. In my mind she was setting booby traps and throwing up road blocks. Cute little colorful road blocks. It was adorable the first four times I had to pull them down. But once the ribbons were becoming almost too tangled to use the whole thing was losing its cuteness.

Then one morning Maddy and her best buddy Boo located the box of colorful bows which for them was like hitting the jackpot. One minute they were digging through the tub filled with all sorts of colors and shapes to find their favorites and the next they had decorated my tree.

At first I was caught off guard. I thought it was a cute 3 year old thing to do and I assumed in the back of my mind that once they were finished with their fun we would all work together to take the bows down and put them back in their tub to be used for wrapping presents.

Then as I stood their watching my tree transform my opinion changed completely. My tree is so festive. So happy. So colorful and quite frankly perfect. I love those bows, both large and small, shiny and muted, so much that we have added more bows to the tree branches as we’ve received them this Christmas. When I look at my bow covered tree it makes me happy.

Those two sweet girls didn’t know it when they placed the entire box of bows all over my tree that they would be starting a tradition in this house. I always thought I would be more of the person who decorated her tree with beautiful ornaments and decorations in coordinating colors but now I can see I was wrong. I’m the person that will be decorating her tree in beautiful ornaments and decorations in coordinating colors and then adding a layer of bows and ribbons in all colors and sizes over the top.