It's Beginning...

...to look a lot like Christmas! I forgot to rest my alarm last night, so it went off at 3:30am. I tried to go back to sleep, but after an hour of tossing and turning, I decided to go ahead and start the day. Joel and I helped my Aunt & Uncle with their Christmas tree and other decorations last night, so the decorating bug had already bitten me. It was still dark outside and I was in the attic rumaging through all my Christmas stuff. I found bags and bags of things that I had forgotten that I'd purchased during last year's "After-Christmas" sale. I unloaded all of last year's bargains and placed them on my desk for a picture! I got some great bargains last year!

Within a couple of hours, I had the tree up and Christmas had once again taken over my house, despite the fact that just yesterday I told Joel that I wasn't going to decorate very much this year because I was trying to remove as much clutter as possible from my house. I had fun putting the ornaments on the trees. Some of these ornaments date back over 40 years. My tree is very eclectic- kind of a time capsule: I have hand-made ornaments from my mother my grandmother and an aunt. I have a bunch of sea shells that I found on the beach and painted silver and gold years ago. I have some of my Dad's old ornaments (probably yard sale or dollar store items, but highly cherised in my eyes). I have a lot of ornaments that I barely recognize as mine- most likely bought in previous "after Christmas" sales, but pretty some pretty cool stuff!

After the halls were fully decked, I turned my attention to the outside. In years past, I haven't ever done much with the outside of my house during the holidays. One year I strung white lights in the dogwood tree. Halfway through December that year, several large sections of the light strands burned out. Other sections decided to start blinking. It's sad to admit, but those lights are still in the tree outside. I never took them down, but they are no longer usuable-- squirrels have gotten to them over the years and chewed the wires. Some day I'll take them down.

I decided to use a lot of garland this year. I went to Lowe's and bought 40' of Frasier Fir garland and 3 wreathes. I came home and wrapped the garland in white lights and draped it around my front door and railings. I hung the wreathes on the front door and the two front windows. I can't wait until it gets dark tonight so I can plug in the lights and see how they look! I'll probably go back to Lowe's tomorrow and get two more wreaths for the other front windows. I also need to find a store that sells colored balls on wires so I can jazz up the garland and the wreathes a little. I can tell this is going to be a work in progress for the next few weeks, until I decide that it's perfect!

I'll try to take some pictures of the house when it gets dark tonight-- if they turn out ok I'll edit this post later with some nighttime shots of the white lights outside.