Decorating for Christmas . . .

Will I ever get finished with decorating for Christmas?  I wish I could find a way that I like and be able to leave it that way . . . for every Christmas hereafter.  If I could just finish one area . . .

I had big plans for the outside decorations.  Last year I purchased some nice garland from Lowes and used that on the front porch rails and around the door so I planned to do the same thing this year.  I wanted to add some icicle lights around the house and maybe even some lighted white wire trees in the yard.  (Saw that in a movie and thought it looked pretty good). 

So far I've only gotten the garland on the rails and around the door.  Dave and I looked at icicle lights at the local dollar store, but they didn't have enough for our house.  We decided to wait until after Christmas and try to get some icicle lights on sale.

Here are the outside decorations at this point in time.  The front door:

I really need to add the big red bows to the corner of the garland and get some red berry limbs in the crock.  The wreath also needs some embellishments I think.  Here is the garland on the railing:

Here is the whole picture of the house:

Don't you think icicle lights would really set the whole house off in a nice way?!?  Maybe next year.  Of course, the best decoration we have on the front porch is the piano.  You do see the piano . . .

This is the piano that came with our old house in Macon when I bought it.  I had two different piano tuners look at the piano and they both said it would take $$$ to fix it and one of them even said I should chunk it.  Zach is taking piano from Martha Blackwell -- his second year -- and he really needed a piano to practice on so I lucked up at the CA auction this year and got a great piano for him within the price range that Dave gave me. :)  So when the men from the church moved the newly purchased piano into our house, they put the old piano on the front porch and  . . .  that is where it has stayed!   Does this make me look like a redneck or what?  I've got to get that piano gone!  Does anyone out there in the internet world need a piano for decoration?  Give me a call!

My other decorating attempts on the inside of the house have fallen a little short on completion as well.  I got some of my snow village out. . . for the first time in a long time. 

Zach helped me move this old baker's rack into the house and I started pulling out the village pieces . . . with Shane's help, of course!  He loves all this stuff.  I half expect to find some of the little people in bed with him one morning.

I had displayed all my snow village pieces on a shelf that went around the top of our den in the old house.  I never put the lights in the pieces so it hasn't been lit up in many many years.  There was some serious dirt on the pieces and I had to wash each piece carefully.  I worked at it pretty good until I got to the bottom shelf and then I got a little tired of fooling with it.  Also, I didn't like the way it was looking and then I figured out what was missing!

I didn't have any snow so I made a quick run to Dollar General and got the last bag!  Maybe tomorrow I'll add it to the display  . . . Notice the purty white styrofoam block under the leg of the baker's rack.    ;D

So after getting tired of the snow village, I moved on to the other Department 56 collection I have . . . the All Through The House series.  My mom had most of the pieces and I had some.  She never put it out anymore and I thought the boys would love it so I asked her to let me put it out at my house last year  . . . . and then I didn't return it!  She didn't care.  My mom doesn't like too much clutter around her house . . . even at Christmas.

Here is part of the collection displayed on our new/old piano:

This collection depicts the story of "Twas the Night Before Christmas".  The scene on the piano is the living room scene with Santa and . . . Ma in her kerchief and I in my cap . . . 

 The outside the house scene:

 This collection is one of my favorite Christmas decorations.  There are more scenes to the collection, i.e., a kitchen scene, a dining room scene, and a bedroom scene, but I haven't gotten them out yet.

My boys love this stuff.

 They also love Jeff, their elf.

Unlike so many of Santa's elves, Jeff does not get into any mischief in our house at night.  Mostly Jeff stays up high so the boys won't be tempted to touch him and cause him to lose his magic.  Truely it's so Shane won't steal him away to his room for play time!  We've really enjoyed having Jeff become a part of our family's Christmas traditions.

We started another tradition that I read about last year on one of the blogs I follow.

I wrapped 36 Christmas books and put them under the tree for the boys.  I let one of the boys pick a wrapped book each night and open it for us to read before going to bed.  Most people wrap just 24 books for the 24 days leading up to Christmas, but I knew that sometimes I would have to let all the boys open a wrapped book instead of just one of them. . . It's worked out pretty good.  Mostly it's Shane who wants to open a book up when it's not his turn and I wrapped some extra Christmas books just for him.

What are some of your family's Christmas traditions?

Everything I have written about . . . all about the Christmas decorating . . . happened yesterday . . . Saturday, December 10th.

Today, however, I have not touched any Christmas decorations although I got to enjoy a beautifully decorated home.

My church had our annual Ladies' Christmas Tea at my friend Angie's house.  She has a gift for decorating.  She could probably take a cardboard box and make it look stylish!

Here are some pictures from the tea.

The Food:

 Beverly and some of the ladies.

Angie's tree: 

 I love those ornaments hanging on the doors.

 Angie with her mom, grandmother, and sister.

Really a lot of fun and great food!  After eating, we shared Christmas memories.  Everyone was asked to bring a special tea cup and share a story with the group of why that tea cup is special to you.  I didn't take a tea cup. 

I, along with many of the other ladies, forgot to bring a tea cup.  But with or without the special tea cup, many of the ladies shared stories of why their tea cup was special to them.  It was truly touching to hear the special stories and Christmas memories from each of the ladies that shared.

Everyone was asked to bring a food item.  Last year, there was nothing but sweets at the tea, so I made some party mix to take.  I saw on a website a cute Santa hat made from mini brownies, strawberries and melted white chocolate.  They looked so cute and sounded very easy to make so I decided to make the Santa hat brownies for the tea as well. 

This is what the Santa hat brownies looked like on the website I saw last night:

 This is what my Santa hat brownies looked like:

 They looked okay.  I didn't eat one.  I'm probably not going to make them again.  They were bigger than I would have liked and looked difficult to eat.  I was told they were delicious.  But you can't always believe everything you're told.  ;-D

All in all -- a great day.  Tomorrow I give a final exam to my Business Law class.  It seems so wrong to do that to those poor college kids right here at Christmas, but that's what I get paid to do. 

Hope your Monday is as painless as possible!

Tina