Decorating Season Begins

It is October and decorating season has begun.

First up is decorating for Halloween, closely followed by Thanksgiving and then Christmas. It will be interesting to see displays change around the neighborhood over the next three months.

Halloween, blowup decorations, body parts, coffin, October decorationsMy neighbors already have their Halloween display put together. They have a number of blow up figures and items gathered together in a spooky ensemble.

Halloween, blowup decorations, body parts, coffin, October decorationsThey also have coffins, lights and many small signs on the ground.

Halloween, blowup decorations, body parts, coffin, October decorationsThey even have a skeleton and body parts hanging from a tree. All in all a very spooky look.

Thanksgiving Turkey - Blow Up Turkey - Thanksgiving Decorations - Feast TimeAfter Halloween, will come some Thanksgiving displays like big blow up turkeys or pumpkins.

christmas dispay, decorations down, blow up decorations, snow manI don’t know if my neighbors will have a display for Thanksgiving, but they will have a big display for Christmas. Last year I let them extend their display across my front yard, and they have already asked if they can do the same this year. I will be a good neighbor once again.

The big question will be how early the Christmas decorations will go up. Will they wait until after Thanksgiving?

Canadians can put up Christmas decoration early, as their Thanksgiving is only a week away 🙂

Steven

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Singing Memories

Today I used the little brochure shown below as a prop for a lesson. Since I have been thinking about it today, I want to share the contents of a post I wrote eight years ago. This paragraph has replaced the first one from the older post, but the rest is the same.

Let's Sing - Songbook - Preferred Risk Mutual Insurance Company - Song Sheet

Last week we had a great singing at our Bible study. We had a group of young people visiting us and they really added to our singing. At our Wednesday Bible study we use a folder of songs that are mainly just words. The folder always makes me think of song sheets or song books from when I was young.

The scan above is the cover of a song sheet that was used by an Insurance Company as an advertisement. The songs on the song sheet were a mix of old hymns and popular choruses. I really love the cover of the song sheet and it brings back memories of using it long ago.

Home made song book - Memories - Children's Songs - Religious Songs

The song sheet was tucked into an old three ring binder of songs that my mother had put together. I am also thinking of my mother tonight as she had knee surgery earlier today, which is partly why this post came wandering back into my head.

Old choruses - Song Book - Old Songs - Religious Songs - Music - Childhood Songs

The three ring binder is a compilation of songs from other song books. I like to look at this as an early example of your favorite mix tape, mix CD or i-Tunes play list 🙂 Here we have a good example of the pages.

You can see the yellowed pages from the song books. I know that many of the song books they came out of were old when the book was put together more than 40 years ago.

The book is open to one of my favorite songs; Give Me Oil In My Lamp. Just singing the words of the song brings back many childhood memories of singing it with my friends. For this song we also had a few extra verses that were made up. I am trying to remember some of them 🙂

There are about 70 songs in the book and I could probably sing almost all of them from memory. Great songs like God Made the Animals, Only a Boy Named David, This Little Light of Mine, Climb Sunshine Mountain and Dare to Be a Daniel.

Song Book - Chorus Book - Red Type - Religious Songs - Sunday School Songs

Another little song book was also tucked in the binder. This one has a little more than 100 songs, but just the words. I also found it interesting that they were all typed in red ink. I took a picture of one of the pages, although I probably should have scanned it for a better image. This page has another of my favorite songs, Keep Your Heart in Tune.

I will be going to bed tonight with songs ringing in my head.

Do you have a favorite Sunday School chorus from when you were young?

Steven

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