Christmas Decor

I think I mentioned that I took advantage of last Sunday's mega storm to put up all of my Christmas decorations. Now "all of my Christmas decorations" has a much different meaning this year than in years past. For a while there, I had Martha Stewart syndrome at Christmastime. I really thought it was absolutely necessary to have multiple trees ... practically one in every room. I had dozens of large boxes filled to the brim with decorations. I put pine garland and mini white lights on just about every surface of my home. I had themed rooms. I just about killed myself every year with hours of work putting up, and hours of work taking down. About 2-3 years ago, I stopped going overboard and last year, I went through my decorations and kept only the ones that I really loved, giving the rest away to Goodwill.

Thought I'd share with you my favorites. First, my tree, which looks odd in my raspberry pink living room, given its red and white theme (but we bought new furniture for the family room last year, and there is no longer room for the tree). I realized something pretty neat the other day - my sister D sent me a picture of her tree, and it is predominantly red & white. My sister M's tree is predominantly red & white too. We didn't plan it that way. I guess it's just genetic or something (although, Mom's tree was not red & white. Maybe it skipped a generation or something!):



Next, my pretty carolers, given to me by my sister M:



And here's what my son humorously refers to as the decapitated Santa. It's a beautiful, richly textured Santa head given to me by my sister D. I think it looks lovely placed in a bowl in my living room, surrounded by pinecones. Ds says "A head in a bowl? That just isn't right, Mom"! But **I** like it!!:



Here's my Christmas village. I hadn't put it up for a couple of years, actually, and I really enjoyed rediscovering all its bits and pieces. I love them all, but my favorites are the church (from dh), the toy shop (from sister M), and the fisherman's cottage, complete with a lake and some fishermen in a boat (also from sister M):





I have lots of snowman-themed decorations, here are a couple of my favorites. The first one is from sister D, the second, from my sister-in-law:




And here is another snowman-themed deco, I love how you can put a tealight in the lantern. But what I really want to show off in this picture is the beautiful Christmas card my sister D sent me. I think it's so neat that she scrapbooks and papercrafts too, and I always love seeing her creations in the gallery of the scrapbook forum we post to, or even better (but unfortunately, more rarely), in person. Now I own one!



So there you have it. The pared down version of Christmas in my home. There are times when I miss pretending I'm Martha. But between pretending I'm Martha and losing my sanity, and keeping it simple and staying sane, I think I'll pick keeping it simple!