How do you decorate

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

for Christmas?

For the past 7 years, we have gone all out with the outdoor lighting. Not sure if we will this year. We have the blown plastic Santa and angel, a wire penguin, 2 holographic Santas (one with a sleigh and one with a train), a bear, 5 deer, icicle lights, small color lights around the windows, doors, and garage, lights around the palm trees, and a spiral tree (lights and ornaments) on the lawn. Plus icicle lights…you can see us from the sky…

Inside is my mother’s domain. She has all the Hallmark Jingle Pals, a musical bear, a talking Santa Claus, a musical Santa that was my stepfather’s (ca. 1940). She also puts out 2 paper mache (sp?) boots that were at one time filled with candy (my step-dad’s), and the stockings.

We have the regular tree, decorated with glass ornaments from the 40’s and 50’s, reproduction ornaments, ornaments I made in school (they never disintegrate!), and lots of plastic ornaments on the bottom, which we have had since we had dogs. We top the tree with an angel.

We have a huge ceramic Nativity scene that has seen better days (every year, there is a new casualty…last year was Joseph’s nose) but it still comes out.

Add to that several other pieces of ceramic (snowman from the 50’s, Santa and Mrs. Claus), a light up snowman, some Christmas houses…

and my pink fiber optic Christmas tree…and a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, complete with blue receiving blanket, big ornament. and twinkly lights…

2

We haven’t done any outdoor decorations, though the long horizontal rooflines of our midcentury modern house just beg for lights. Maybe when the kids are older, and care.

I have a 6’ green tree that I decorate with gold ornaments… and a 6’ white tree that I decorate with vintage Shiny Brite ornaments… and a 4’ pink tinsel tree and a 4’ green tinsel tree for the fireplace nook and guest room respectively. There is also a 4’ tree I haven’t used in years, but that will now become my baby daughter’s bedroom tree.

I am contemplating replacing the two 6’ trees with a bigger one. They are both slimline. I’m torn between getting a nice looking full width 7.5" tree, or going crazy and getting a 9’. What do you think?

I also have a village for the mantel.

3

I’m not even sure we’re putting the tree up this year. Dominic is going to be spending the Christmas holiday in VA with his dad, so it’s just going to be the two of us, and honestly? I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble. Our current house (rental) is just not well laid out to put a tree. It requires lots of reorganizing, and then everything is awkward and difficult to access/use during the time the tree is up. I’m thinking we may just skip it this year. We’re definitely not decorating outside. We did it the first year we were here, but by the end of the season almost all the lights had failed and so what’s the point?

4

Here at the college apartment, we have hung a stocking my mom made years ago on the door. My roommate meant to bring a little tree from her home, but forgot. I still hope we can put a tiny one up or something, but if we can’t, that’s fine.

Back at my house, we usually have the tree up (and I’ve been in charge of all the decorations for the last 4-ish years now) around the 20th. It depends on when we can convince my dad to go out and get a tree. Our stockings are already hanging though; I put them up before I left.

We decorate in different locations inside the house with “snow” (white, cotton-feeling pieces of fabric with small amounts of glitter and sparkles on them) on various surfaces, and put various decorative displays on top of those. Candles, figurines we collected throughout my childhood, stuff from my parents’ childhoods, wreaths, etc. All of it has so much history to it, and I love re-examining it.

I also throw a couple of sets of net lights up out front, but they’re nothing fancy. Kinda sad to have them there, actually, with no accompanying displays. I love gazing at others’ lights displays though.

5

Living with my parents right now and my mom has always been a Christmas freak. She has at least 20 big plastic containers full of decorations and that’s just for indoors. She has a couple dozen outside decorations that are a mix of the blow up ones and lit wires shaped like various holiday items. When we were kids and lived in a bigger house she had at LEAST 3 Christmas trees up throughout the house. Now that they live in a tinier place, it’s restricted to one. She takes at least 2 weekends to put up all of her decorations which includes, but is not limited to, singing angels, three nativity scenes, at least five HUGE music boxes, socks for every child AND grandchild (10), two mini poinsettia trees, an animated Santa on a rocking chair, animated cowboy Santa playing a guitar, animated snowmen who sing and dance, a Santa who climbs up a ladder, and a Christmas village consisting of about 25 houses and 50 accessories which takes up an entire room when laid out on display. She’s crazy, I swear but the kids LOVE it, so I guess that’s what matters :slight_smile:

6

We’ve been in this house for 7 years, and except for the 2nd year when I hung a wreath on the wall next to the garage door, we’ve done nothing inside or out. This year won’t be any different. I guess we’re getting Grinch-y in our old age, but once Thanksgiving gets here, we’re wishing it was January.

Funny thing is, I’ve got a pre-lit tree and boxes of ornaments that have never been opened. I’m thinking I need to yardsale that stuff and free up some storage space. Ho ho ho.

7

We won’t be decorating this year. We have two new cats, one of which is a kitten. Max already steals all the tealight candles from my holder, I can just imagine what he’d do with a tree or all the other stuff I usually do.

But normally, I love to deck out the house. I’ve always been lucky enough to live rural, so I bring a lot of the outdoors inside. I use Pine tree limbs and bare twigs and pine cones, some painted. I also always have holly bushes with pretty red berries. So pretty and smells good too.

Shoot, I wasn’t really missing it til I started writing about it. I may have to do the outside. My husband will have to be enlisted for that though, so my hopes are not high.

8

My husband doesn’t have much in the way of holiday traditions, but he does feel a need to put up outdoor lights. Our neighborhood association gives prizes for outdoor displays, and we will never ever get one because some of these people try to outdo Clark Griswold, but we add a little more every year and joke that now we deserve to win!

Indoors, there’s the tree of course, a monster pre-lighted thing. If there is one job on this earth that I hate, it’s the putting up and taking down of Christmas trees. I’d rather clean up other people’s vomit. However, I can’t seem to give up the tree and it seems silly to buy a small one when we already have this nice giant one…

We also have a large assortment of other indoor décor which came to us when my MIL died, including a ceramic snowman with green glass eyes that is lit from within. He looks quite demonic. His storage box is labeled “Frosty the Snowman and Eater of Souls. Open with caution!” I labeled it myself but that still cracks me up every year.

9

Nothing outdoors, since we don’t have an outlet.

Indoors, we decorate the tree, put up lights, hand ornaments from the curtain rods, switch to the Christmas towels, put up a moving Santa and singing chipmunks, and generally fill the living room with Christmas.

10

I don’t. I visit family at Christmas time so it seems silly to put up decorations that nobody will be there to see.

11

I put a little 2’ pre-lit tree in my big picture window, behind my couch. I made a stand for it and everything. I have like 10 ornaments that I put on it. It’s nice because it serves as indoor and outdoor decoration. My neighbors are big on outdoor decoration so I gotta make sure I have something.

I have a fake ficus in the corner on which I hang this family of felt bear ornaments. My now-deceased grandma gave them to my family at some point and I grabbed them from mom’s decoration box as a reminder of grandma.

Otherwise, I’m not big on decorations. The little tree is just fine for me. I do thoroughly enjoy my neighbors’ lights!!

12

Ditto.

Except for the fact that I wouldn’t decorate anyway. I’m just not a very decoratey type person.

13

My mother suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis and I was her caretaker, so I lived with her until her death.

While she was alive, the lady was a Christmas nut. We always had the family dinner at our place, so of course the whole house had to look like Christmas vomited all over it. As a result we had enough decorations to fill a three-bedroom, 2.5 bath, living room, dining room, sun room (which ran the length of the house), family room space - and maybe a bit left over. Then there were the outdoor lights… :rolleyes: I gave all those to my BIL for their house.

Fast-forward to my move into a two bedroom, 1.5 bath, living room, dining area condominium.

Yeah, we did the math, too. :smiley:

Even after sis and I **split **the decorations between us, I *still *have too much stuff. The tree alone takes an entire weekend to decorate and I am not exaggerating.

The first ten years after I moved in I decorated like we used to, but gradually in the last five years or so, I’ve been scaling back. The last four years I haven’t even pulled out the tree and in the last two, i’ve put out a wreath or two and some holiday-type candles and called it good.

14

I strung coloured lights around my living room, but with the intention of keeping them all year - it looks purty!

I might go get the tiny fibre optic tree when we get closer.

Other than that, nah. No one comes to visit me for Christmas, I go to them.

15

We do not decorate at all - the 800 sq foot house is so badly laid out there is no room for anything, and we have a cat that would destroy the decorations.

One thing I have been debating making is some sort of wire frame hanging tree concept that would hold the dozen or so very antique german blown glass ornaments that have been in the family for over 150 years, though I do need to get the peacock re-tailed [a cat belonging to my parents stalked and killed the poor thing by pulling out all the tail feathers :smack::(] I think if we hang it in the peak of the cathedral cieling in the living room we may be able to keep them safe - though mrAru suggested just hanging a tree there upside down:D:D

16

I am going to come out and admit this publicly:

Our wreath is still up from last year.

In our defense (and yes, it’s fake) we have a double front door and both doors have glass (rather than screen) doors on the outside. One door opens normally, and that’s the door we use. The other door takes an Act of God to open what with all the locks and screwdrivers and crap that’s required, and so we never ended up taking it down last year.

17

We might, might buy (and put out) one of those little ceramic Christmas trees with the little plastic lights. Otherwise, zilch.

Once we get out of this *%&#^ trailer and buy an actual house, then we’ll go nuts.

18

I’m stringing lights all around the windows, and wrapping a dummy in lights and hanging him upside down from the roof to make it look like [del]I[/del] he fell trying to put them up.

19

My auntie has boxes of Christmas stuff. She decorates the entire house. It’s more of an inside versus outside thing - no blowup Santas on the roof - but she really does make a winter wonderland out of her place. She has MS and her eyesight has been failing for years, so I assume my cousins have been helping.

I think people who deck the halls for Christmas are cute. It sounds fun. I know if I celebrated Christmas I’d be doing the same thing! I’m the type who’d put up themed tree and have perfectly manicured Christmas villages.

20

I put lights up on the house, but ran out when I got to the garage. Luckily, I found some more of the same lights and have asked my B-i-L to put them up (I hate ladders, and they dislike me, too). I also have 4’ lighted trees to flank the front door and breezeway door. I wish I had the money to hire someone to put lights on the huge evergreen in my front yard - my sister did it once when she lived here, and it looked lovely.

Last year we put up a 5’ fake tree inside, and I’m debating whether I can trust the cats to leave a real tree alone. They did will with the fake tree, but I prefer real trees. No mantle for the stockings, so I hang them from the edge of my antique sewing machine. I also have lighted boughs that I drape along the top of the curtains. Then there are the various whatnots that get put out - music boxes, snowglobes, and a smallish lighted Santa that I received when I was 4.

TheKid has a small lighted tree for her room, and she has strings of multicolored lights all around the walls.