Reflecting on our dilemma on GoY a couple of months ago.

Julia, it certainly was a very challenging time when the photos wouldn't upload. I wouldn't even be able to make a video as I don't have a Smartphone/iPhone, just a basic phone for texts and calls. Dinosaur that I am!

My favourite decorations for the tree are ones made some years ago by our grandaughter. They are letter N (Nanny), letter G (Grandad) and a snowflake.

I have no particular favourites but I do love opening the boxes and tins which hold the decorations and seeing everything again. I tend to like smaller, daintier ones the best.

Yes I also love the smaller ones! My eldest grandaughter when she was much younger always loved to trim the tree herself and must admit, she had a better flair for it than I did!
I have copied her way over the years with small silver and gold, which she insisted that I must do the very same!

Julia, I began putting Christmas decorations out this afternoon - hall carpet is now covered in glitter that has fallen out of a bag of baubles! They were bought, brand new, in a charity shop as I'm going for silver and green this year, not my usual red and gold. Tree and decs. should be all done tomorrow before the England football match kicks off!

love the site for the kind people , I had a site that vanished and sometimes pics don't show, apart from that now seems to be fine without tempting fate. I don't post much now just like the pictures and chat. We have a cheap plastic tree lol , smelly tinsel and a few little baubles . Do have a Harrods from 2001 ! My Mum went not me lol

Over the years I've become fed up with the way the creators of GoY ignore pm's (and have always done) it's so disrespectful, and with the way they don't bother to fix things that go wrong. I got so fed up and annoyed that I left. I asked Dave to delete my account but he didn't.

I must say as time went on I found that I did not miss GoY at all.
Sometimes I thought of the friends I've made over the years, and wondered how they were getting on, but I didn't miss the actual site at all. To be honest I felt relieved not to be bothered with it any more.

I must also say I have belonged to other sites for many years and I have found them just as easy to use as GoY, and there are very friendly helpful members on them.

However, since my account is still open I thought I might as well join in again.
I get fed up with flagging things though, and I don't think the way GoY is run will ever improve.

.

I don't bother much with Christmas decorations these days, it's too much fuss. I'm not a 'Christmassy' person. I find it boring.
And now that I am on my own I can do whatever I want.

Reminds me.....To Dave and whoever else remains to assist in the administration and maintenance of this site on a not for profit basis....as I understand.....Thank You Ever So Much!!!

Loosestrife - I second that comment. Happy Christmas to you Dave !

I too am thankful that the site is working better, so many thanks from me too Dave and admin. I've been part of GoY for over 14 years now and do dip out now and again but all friends are always there welcoming you back..It's lovely..:))
My Christmas tree is a gold cone, must be 12 years old, with lights and berries and small hanging decorations that my two granddaughters loved growing up. So my theme is always gold red and green. I think my favourite dec is a hanging rocking horse, it always makes me smile and reminds me of those very old fashioned Christmases of long ago..

I'm giving Goy the benefit of the doubt at the moment as I realise we are lucky to have it at all.

I haven't put up any decorations yet, I don't mind that side of it but I get fed up of looking at Chinese **** after about 5 days and it seems to take forever to take down again. The thing I like most about Christmas is writing the cards but the PO have put the kibosh on even that this year.
As for baubles, we have a dusty pink glittery one which our first ever neighbour gave us (with others) 50 years ago. It was one of a few which sat on a spindly tree amongst a living room practically bereft of furniture. They were an old couple who showed us real kindness by deigning to share a glass of sherry with us youngsters on Christmas Eve and made no comments about their rather sparse surroundings and our social awkwardness.
Each year I pull it out and say "Happy Christmas, Mr ...." He'll never be forgotten though he passed a few months later.

What I miss the most and can never recapture again is the aroma of Christmas. That heady piney scent coming from a fresh harvested ( not manufactured) Christmas tree which permeated the room it was placed in. In my childhood and younger years the real tree was decorated with glass balls, and multicolored lights which showed through a webbing of silvery tinsel. The lights which were hung on the tree in those days were of a higher voltage and HOT. They were in a delicate balance of not hot enough to set the tree on fire but hot enough to heat and boil off the pine resin scent off the tree and into the room(s) of the house. To my young eyes and nose it was great time. Those kind of lights are no longer made and what is left are cool low voltage led ones. As for the smell it now comes from a wintergreen plug in odorizer. So every year I give to myself that gifted memory of not only the sight of Christmas but the smell of it too. My fondest wishes to you all....Merry Christmas!

I think the problem is that live small trees sold just for Christmas in pots suffer from great damage to the root ball in carelessly (since the growers assume they will be thrown out after the season and not later used for landscaping purposes)digging them out and trimming them to fit the pots they are placed in. Some collateral root growth does occur but not enough to sustain it.

You all know how much I love my Goy, I have been here from the beginning, I hovered for over a year before I plucked up the courage to enter my first blog, that was in 2008, I've had many problems over the years but I stuck with it, I've often wished that Peter and Ajay had asked for a yearly subscription for the site, I would willingly pay, in my opinion it is and always has been the best and easiest to use..
Of course it is very frustrating when it goes wrong as it did not all that long back, it took a long while to sort out but we got it back, many thanks to Dave and whoever it was that sorted the problem....
Like Klahanie I think of all of us as friends, most of whom are longstanding, we've gotten to know each other, watched our families grow, get married and even know a lot of the grandchildren, it is special and long may it be that way x .....
I'm in the middle of doing the christmas decorations, we have really special ones for the trees, lots have meaning to them, bought for memories of pets, family and places we have visited, added two this year to commemorate the life and loss of our Beloved Queen Elizabeth 11, there are also treasures, some very old, my special favorite is an angel for the top of the tree, bought for me by my mum in 1969, to celebrate my oldest daughters first Christmas, she is fragile now but when she is on top of the tree she looks good ....

I'm just catching up, since this blog was posted my Goy went stupid again and the only post I managed to get on was on the questions pages, I had done nothing to any of my settings but I was locked out for some reason, I had to shut down security settings to post that day, not really a good idea, thankfully it came back on Dec 31st, no rhyme nor reason and definitely beyond my comprehension....

Sue, not again! You really have had a lot of problems on the site ... think positive and that 2023 will be the year the gremlins have gone ... :o))

I was locked out earlier today too, but it seems to be OK now. I do agree about being grateful for Goy. I've been around for about 12 years now and get a "fix"most days. We've seen many faces come and go and some I still miss. But it has felt like a real privilege to be able to speak with folk from all over the country, and to see all your lovely photos. I do agree with Lincs about a subscription - I would be more than happy to pay up.
Julia I really like the blue bauble - it would be my favourite too!
Loosetrife thankyou for reminding us of that lovely piney smell! (You didn't mention the carpet of needles under the tree by January, lol.) We don 't bother with a tree any more. And with young cats it would be asking for trouble!

I wasn't born under Taurus for no reason ladies, I'm stubborn and refuse to give up, I'm in it for the long haul, faithful to the very end, lol.
I'm not altogether sure if any of you have been here long enough to remember but many moons ago when Peter and Ajay were running the site, my account used to get mixed up with Iciar, my comments would often disappear, other times I would appear as Iciar, the avatar was a baby,I was quite fond of that photograph, I still have the pm's from Ajay from when he was trying to sort it for me, they never did figure it all out though, in the end members got used to it and knew that the posts were actually mine, thinking about it I'm curious now, going to look and see if that account is still on here.....

Sue, I remember that little baby face avatar! I wouldn't search for it ... you could possibly open a right old can of worms!

That is so funny Shirley, I opened a huge can of worms a few hours ago, its all okay though, it was my own compost bin, the worms in there were having a whale of a time, just goes to prove how warm it is this week .....

Ha, ha Sue ... I am always amazed at the number of those brandling worms in my Dalek composter. Today was forecast to be dry all day, sadly not, as it's now drizzly rain (2pm) so all I managed to do was spread two bags of chipped bark around the back shrub area. Where the bird feeders are the pesky Pigeons walk around the ground beneath, looking for fallen seed and the old bark seems to just disappear!