It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

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I LOVE Christmas decorations! I am always so sad in January when we have to take them down and the house looks so bare. We have been pretty busy this year, and didn't do as much as we normally do... I think we have done just about as much decorating this year as we are going to do. Early in the season, I was very ambitious and was going to put up AT LEAST 6 (possibly more) trees. Each one was to have its own theme... The basement tree has always been our Auburn tree. We even have orange and blue lights, and lots of themed ornaments. I have also always wanted a rustic tree on my screened porch, with grapevine for garland, and pine cones, berries, etc. I've also always wanted one on our catwalk above our front door so people outside can see it (Alan swears he did this one year, but I don't think so). Anyway, those three didn't happen... We also haven't put Carter's tree up yet either, but we will do that soon.

So, I have 3 trees up, and I think I'm done (except for Carter's)! The keeping room tree this year has multi-colored lights, and the ornaments are pink/turquoise/lime green. I didn't put too many ornaments on it, because I decided to also make that our Christmas card tree (I am going to punch holes in each card and hang them with ribbon, as soon as I can find my hole punch).

Below is the mantle in the keeping room, right next to the tree... Isn't this new stocking holder cute? It's configurable, up to 6 stockings, and I got it from Sam's (they also had a more traditional one, but I thought this was cute for kids).

The living room tree is on loan from the Joneses; they got a new one this year, so we are borrowing the old Roberta. I got some green lights, brown, medium dark red, and avocado green ornaments, and made a big bow (not shown) for it. It looks a little bare, but hopefully I will be able to buy more things in this color scheme on the day after Christmas. Yay for sales!

The dining room tree used to be our formal tree - all ivory and gold (I even used to wrap our presents in ivory/gold paper and use big gold ribbon around each one). However, this year it ended up being our "little bit of everything" tree. It has some of its previous ivory and gold decorations, along with all our family ornaments and everything else we've collected along the way :) I didn't put a topper or ribbons on it because I can't find what I used last year, so I think it will survive this season without those :)

We (I) opted out of the garland and ribbon on our indoor bannisters, wreaths on every window, ornaments hung by ribbon on our dining room and breakfast room light fixtures, and lots of other random items. It was very nice to send all the boxes back to the attic and declare that I was finished, even though we didn't get everything out :)

Pandi makes fun of me for this basket I purchased at Christmas Village. She called me "Granny" when I bought it ;) It's interchangable, and you can buy clips for every occasion! That is so right up my alley!

One of my favorite new items this year is Charlie's Noah's Ark tree. I haven't taken a picture of it, but here is what it looks like:

We have lots of other random items, like 3 lighted, ceramic trees (my favorite is in the powder room - it looks so pretty in there with the lights off), plates, candles, and various decorations. Outside, we have lighted garland on our stairs, 2 reindeer that move, and 2 lighted trees. Eventually, we would like to look like the Griswald house, but we're taking it one step at a time.

I tried to crop Alan out of this one, but it didn't work!